Best Site for Nature Sounds….hmmmm

When it comes to recording nature sounds, I’m always on the lookout for new sites to record Mother Nature for the Nature Sounds section of my web site.

Terry, an old friend of mine, has 180 acres about an hour’s drive from town where he has a big barn and stables for his horses and land for hunting. He mentioned to me on several occasions that I should come out to his property where he keeps his horses, and go into the woodlands there to record nature sounds. He rides his horses there and says the afternoons are particularly nice when there is a gentle wind blowing through the pine trees, the insects sing and the birds high in the trees call to each other.

So what could be bad about that site for nature sounds? Let me tell you…

So not being able to turn down an invitation to do some nature sound recording, one lazy summer day, I took him up on his invitation and loaded up the equipment and headed to his “farm.”

After entering the combination to the gate and entering the private fenced property, I followed an old dirt road deep into the woods. Soon I pulled off to the side of the road, turned off the truck and rolled down the windows to listen to gentle forest sounds accompanied by a quiet breeze. I gathered all the recording gear and took off into the woods to find the perfect area with the right combination of nature acoustics I was looking for. I soon found “the” spot and set up the gear. An hour later after making sure the microphones were set correctly and I had enough recording space to grab 3 or 4 hours, I hit the ‘record’ button and headed back to the truck.

I spent the next several hours visiting with my friend, where we ate lunch and talked before going back into the woods to gather my recording gear, which would be recording all the glorious nature sounds while I was away.

When we finished, my friend wanted to go back with me and see the site where I had decided to record, as well as help me gather up all the equipment and take it back to the truck. So I drove us down the little dirt road again and pulled over, parked the truck and we got out and begin to wade through the brush and make our way to the spot where I had left the equipment recording about 3 hours earlier.

I didn’t recognize the spot. since I was looking for two big microphone stands with microphones covered by big furry wind screens. I didn’t see any. Maybe I was in the wrong place. No, this was the right place. But no microphones!

Upon closer inspection, I saw the microphone stands on the ground and they, along with my recorder they were cabled to, had been dragged through the brush and dirt about 20 feet. Amazingly the recorder was still recording!

One of the microphones was severely damaged. The big furry windscreen looked like a wet rag, off the microphone and covered in dirt. The metal mesh screen at the top of the microphone was broken off and crushed. The microphone itself was not too badly damaged, but there were indentions all over it, had dirt stuck to it and looked kind of slimy.

What had happened? Did someone stumble on my recording gear and vandalize it? Or maybe they were going to steal it and when they heard us coming, they ran off? But this was private property encased inside a fence and had a locked gate to get in. We were deep into the woods. What are the chances someone would be on the property and out of the 180 acres, find this little secluded spot? None of this added up or made any sense.

My only hope to answering this question was that the recording itself would yield some clues.

In the recording studio, I pulled up the recording and with my favorite headphones began to listen to each minute. As I came to the 50-minute mark into the recording, I heard some kind of rustling sound and listened as it came closer to the microphones. This was it! I was capturing whoever (or whatever) it was as they came onto the scene. From what I could hear, it actually sounded like two people. I could tell from the brush being trampled that they were walking around the equipment. Maybe they were deciding what kind of gear it was and if it was of any value to them! Then I heard them walk right up to the left microphone and bump up against it.

Then they grabbed the microphone and after that all I could hear was a popping sound combined with a metal-on-metal grinding sound. Then it sounded as though the furry wind screen was being pulled off, then more dragging and bumping. After a series of loud crunching and popping, there was a sudden silence — the microphone, now damaged beyond repair, had recorded its last sound and fell deathly quiet.

I gathered from what I had heard that the persons doing this could not figure out how to remove the microphone cable from the microphone, and had tried to pull it off or hold the microphone with a shoe and pull the cord dragging the recording deck and the other microphone and cables with it.

As the right side microphone was still active and recording, a minute later I heard it. Could it be? Was I hearing a horse whinny?

Is it possible that one of the horses had stumbled onto the scene? Maybe the horse had gotten entangled in the cables. I thought I had better take a look at what was left of the destroyed microphone.

There it was, plain as day…big horse teeth marks! Apparently a horse had stumbled on the gear, saw the big furry wind screen that was covering the microphone, and started to nibble on it, eventually pulling it off. He then decided to taste the microphone and the popping sound I heard was him crunching on the microphone all while dragging the stand, the other microphone and the connected recording deck with it. Eureka! It was a horse, not a person!

I called Terry and told him what I had discovered and we both had a good laugh. This mystery was solved. I had him check the horses and make sure none were missing any teeth. The microphone and furry windscreen were toast and had to be junked.

Terry has invited me back out to his property but suggested that he would keep the horses in their respective paddocks this next time. And I suggested that when we record again, we take some folding chairs and a cooler and babysit the gear this time.

I learned a lot of lessons from this nature recording outing. Like don’t leave expensive recording equipment out by itself unsupervised, especially at a nature site. And don’t be surprised when Mother Nature plays a joke on you!