It's the hours and hours with the 'cans' on your ears till they get tender, and your bottom asleep, listening to every little tree frog and cricket chorus..... It's watching your software coming up to a 'blip' on the recording line, and hoping it's something important, or interesting. Sometimes for hours it's just the crazy beautiful cocktail of nature's night music, and nothing more. And just when the crickets are lulling you to sleep... You hear it. That loud snap of crunched brush. Then another and another in a slow steady pattern. You can tell something with real weight is making those sounds.
And my imagination goes wild. In that moment...I'm out there, and all my senses are trained on what's coming through those headphones. What a rush!
This is my recording set-up:
My earlier recorders were the Olympus DS-30, 31 and DS61, And there were very good, but got damaged by moisture over time. (Hence the dry box).
When I first arrived here, I recorded every night. My job was to do field research, and so I recorded all night and listened to the recordings all day. I was in Sybilla heaven.
The evening of July 6th 2012, Ronie Powell, (Tennessee BFRO, and best friend in the Universe), and I put the food down at the berm at 9:45pm..... 22 minutes later it sounded like something was very unhappy with the recorder. Listen for the growl at the 18 second mark and again at the end around the 32 second mark.
Some have asked me if I ever get scared living in an active area like this... and yes, yes I do.
Tomorrow I'll share more images audio from that first summer.