大象传媒

As I left Ipswich with station engineer David Butcher the rain began to fall and, frankly, we were a bit concerned.听 A dawn chorus punctuated by raindrops falling on a microphone shield was not what we were after!听 But we needn't have worried, the rain stopped and, although it was a little on the chilly side, we had perfect conditions.

A warm welcome

Our expert for the morning was Suffolk Wildlife Trust's West Suffolk Reserves Manager Joe Davis, and he greeted us with a cup of tea, which was very welcome, before we trudged through the reserve to our chosen reserve location.

Kate Arkell interviews Joe Davis

We were going to a patch of scrub land, where there are hazel bushes which have been coppiced to provide good cover, as well as plenty of ground cover and some taller trees.

At first all we could hear was the hum of the A11 (rather surprising considering it wasn't even five o'clock!) and the clanking of rope against masts owned by the boat club that uses one of the Lakes.听Once the first birds, robins and black caps, struck up a few notes there were soon too many of them for me to pick out individual songs.

Lackford Lakes

Predator alert

"I've been listening and learning bird song for quite a few years now," said Joe.听 "Now I can tell that every different species is distinctly different, you learn the differences and also the differences in what the birds are thinking, some birds change their song if a predator, like a sparrowhawk or a cat, is close."

The dawn chorus will be different depending on where in the county you are because there are so many different habitats.听So, close to the reed beds, which are common in the east of Suffolk, you could hear reed warblers and sedge warblers. You may even be lucky enough to hear a booming bittern.听

If you're close to a woodland, like Wolves Wood near Hadleigh or Bradfield Woods in the west, you're likely to hear nightingales and blackcaps.

The technical bit

David Butcher explains how the Dawn Chorus was recorded: "I used two different methods. The first was simply a Sennheiser stereo microphone connected directly into a portable solid state recorder (Nagra ARES-M) and the microphone was placed on a tall stand about 3 metres above ground level.

大象传媒 Radio Suffolk Engineer David Butcher

"The second method was to use two Sony tie-clip microphones on the same stand, spaced about 70cm apart and fed via an external mic amplifier to a portable DAT machine.

"Although this gave a nice stereo image, the recordings were unusable as the tie clip mics suffered badly from wind noise."

For more information about Lackford Lakes, click on the Suffolk Wildlife Trust weblink on the right.