Recordings of Grey Seal pups in the dunes by Horsey beach, Norfolk, UK – December 2012.
These seals are about 3 to 5 weeks old; 3 weeks after they are born, their mother leaves them and they crawl from the beach into the dunes to shelter against the wind whilst they wait to shed their fur, after which they dive into the sea. They tend to leave for the sea to get food when they are about 6 weeks old.
In early September 2012, me and two other sound recordists/game audio folk (Andy Riley & Augie Restivo) went to visit a friend of mine who had recently installed a bee hive into his garden. We were armed to the teeth; our total gear list consisted of 10 microphones and 4 recorders. We all felt slightly goofy bringing that much equipment for what was supposed to be a leisurely afternoon in the company of approximately 35000 bees (in fact my friend the owner figured the number was close to 50000). But as it turned out, having that many microphones simply meant we could geek out and stick mics wherever we wanted in order to try and record this army of bees from every possible angle.
We captured a lot of material that day, but below are what were in my view some of the most interesting results.
This first snippet was captured with 2 tiny DPA 4060s taped onto a stick and placed right at the little gap that the bees use for entering and exiting the hive.
Sounds recorded in various locations in Bolivia: the Amazon, the Amazonian wetlands and the barren mountain lakes near the Uyuni salt planes.
You can either just have listen to the playlist below, or read on for a little more detail and context.