A'Mhoine - moorland soundscapes

TRACKLIST (Click for notes)

1 Peewits before dawn .......... 4'06"

2 White moor chorus ........... 15'46"

3 Mixed moor chorus ............ 9'38"

4 Heather moor chorus ........... 9'48"

5 On the gneiss .................. 16'32"

6 Mhoine flow ................... 14'22"

7 Lochside evening ............... 4'40"

 

TRACK NOTES

1 Peewits before dawn ........ 4'06"

The aerial display of a party of lapwings recorded at around 4.45am in April. I was staying with friends in a village on the edge of moorland in the Scottish Highlands; I popped out the back with my coffee to check on the weather conditions before setting off for a nearby wood. And in the darkness over the frozen field at the bottom of their garden this was going on. I could see very little and can only guess how many birds were in the air - maybe 6 -10 ?

2 White moor chorus .......... 15'46"

Recorded in April soon after dawn on bog- and rush-covered rough grazings in the Borders. Such sheep country, though green enough in its lush summer coat, tends to a bleached white with died-back grasses and rushes for over half the year - hence 'white moors'. The songs and calls of curlew, so characteristic of much of upland Britain, skylark and occasionally meadow pipit can be heard. Many bird species of this open country tend to sing and display in the air for further coverage in broadcasting their message and often seem at their best hanging on a breeze.

3 Mixed moor chorus ...........9'38"

Scenes recorded in May at sunrise on a Borders moor with a patchwork of bracken and heather. The rocky gully of a burn is nearby - the home of a pair of ring ousel. The occasional burnside tree attracts chaffinch and willow warbler; the heather patches have resident red grouse and wrens are here and there where there's a little bit of cover; all can be heard through the track. Numerous winchat spend the summer in the hollows along the valley of the burn; the bird singing here throws in some fine mimicry of greenshank, common sandpiper and sand martin.

4 Heather moor chorus ..........9'48"

Scenes recorded on a moor in north-east Scotland in April in the early morning; this was the only sheltered spot I could find on an otherwise very breezy morning after a wet night. This moor is just above open pinewoods and has areas of sphagnum moss, so can support a wider range of species. The cackling of red grouse, the cooing songs of black grouse from a nearby lek, the bubbling trills of curlew, meadow pipit song and the calls of short-eared owl and hen harrier can be heard.

5 On the gneiss ................. 16'32"

Lewisian gneiss is the rock base of the far north-west in Scotland and is some of the oldest rock in the world. It is hard and infertile, giving scant soil; there's little heather, but more coarse grasses, bog myrtle, sphagnum, deer sedge and a mosaic of lochans and rocky knolls. You can get lost in quarter of a mile. The microphones were set up to record the wheatear singing and displaying from one such rocky knoll early on a May morning; the arrival of a female leads to a vocal contest between two males and the male's song while mating can be heard. After some time one or two golden plover from a small party nearby begin flighting round the knoll past the mics. Later the calls of a peregrine falcon, mobbed by oystercatchers, can be heard in the distance and the calls of a pair of ravens moving around over the loch to and from crags nearby. Cuckoo song, meadow pipit song, stonechat calls and distant merlin calls can also be heard.

6 Mhoine flow morning ........ 14'22"

Scenes recorded between 5am and 7am in early May in northern Scotland. This moor is fairly typical of the flow country with an extended patchwork of sphagnum bog, grass hummocks with a little straggly heather, small peaty lochans and a few gravelly pools. The courting calls and aerial songs of greenshank are interspersed with the wailing and cackling of a pair of red-throated divers occupying a nearby lochan. Golden plover, skylark, meadow pipit, pied wagtail, dunlin and ringed plover can also be heard.

7 Lochside evening.............. 4'40"

A June evening by the side of a loch in the northern highlands with the flutey whistle of redshanks singing and calling, common sandpiper and common toad (the identification in the inlay - common frog - is wrong here). A pair of black-throated divers give occasional moans, floating on the loch with their newly-hatched chick. Having spent long sessions watching silent birds on quite a few occasions, I'd been told (thanks, Tom) that the males give an occasional song in the few days after the hatching of young. This bird sang at about 8.30 in the evening in the floodlight, a few moments after the sun had dropped below a cloud bank that had hidden it for several hours. We pick our moments.