The Humpbacks are here again!

The last years a fantastic event has taken place in the month of November here in Tromsø, Norway. 10s and 10s of Humpback whales arrives with the schools of herring and followed by Orcas and an occasional Finwhale. Great fun for naturalists and photographers as long as we have light here north of the Arctic Circle. On show some of my shots last november.
All photos: Stein Ø. Nilsen COPYRIGHT

 

Grouses wishes Happy New Year 2014!

The recording season for 2014 has started with Willow grouse/ptarmigan Lagopus lagopus displaying close to our house in Tromsø. Also the Northern lights are flashing over the skies the last days, so reallly scenic backgrounds for the sounds. I made a time-lapse movie of photos starting 1,5 hour into the new year, and then a few days later around the island of Kvaløya.
Hope you all enjoy the views and sounds! The Boreal/Tengmalms owl is recorded in the same area as the grouses.

Willow grouse displaying in Tromsø

Zoom H6 Review: in field and post

The new Zoom H6 has been awaited and proper tests of noise levels have been asked for around different forums on web. I received my H6 this weekend and have managed to make a few trials with my Telinga PIP 3.5mm-input microphone.

The H6 is larger, heavier and more bulky than the old H4n! But it seems to be more solid and feels really nice and stable in use. I've done a few ambient recording early in the morning close to the sea, and in birch forest for woodpeckers invading us in the moment. All recording are made outside the town of Tromsø, Straumsbukta on the island of Kvaløya, Northern Norway.

I use Audacity for filtering and converting to MP3s and finds it very useful for my use!

The quality on bare files I tested by laying my parabolic mic in the bed with 2 thick douvets  (ab. 15 cm) over, so it should be reasonable quiet :) I then made a recording and adjusting the input level from 10 to 7. Listen to the file on Sound Cloud.



I also made some recordings out in nature to get some real grip of its capablities, listen to this Great Spotted Woodpecker and the Willow tit on XENO-CANTO


The battery life seems to much better that the H4n and found it easy to connect a 5V iPhone/Android spare battery as a Power supply. (See also my blog how to do this for H4n) For H6 it is much easier as you use the original USB/USB-Mini-cable. So I think the quality of recordings are good, but I did not like some of the changes compared to the H4n and this came as a surprize to me.

POST AT YOUR PC
In the MENU you can choose to name files as a Date-time or a Zoom+Number (ZOOM0001,..)
And that workes fine, I prefer to name them with date and time to keep track of when (and where) I made the recording. But then the first surprize occurs!

All files you record are stored within a NEW folder within the top folder. And they are named with numbers NOT with Date+time.

So that means even you have chosen to name your files with Date-time it will occur as 0001,0002 in the folder01 as shown here. So to find out when you recorded the file you have to open each and every one of them. When you open the f.ex. ZOOM0017-folder it looks like this:

Even here the Wav-file is not named with Date+time!
(NB! I have chosen to make an optional filtered -12dB COPY  that is named _BU), the one named ZOOM0017_LR is the "original" recording - BUT the Wav-filename does not contain anything about time and date! That you will find in a small project-file .hprj So why is this a problem for me?

When I open the file and search through it for birds recorded, I will make exports of scenes or singel species. When I choose to save this as MP3 or Wav it will suggest filename as seen below. This is to plundersome and not a good way of handling files!

File ZOOM0007 opened in Audacity, Meadow pipit and young gull appears in the sonogram. THe noise
in the bottom of the sonogram is a large ship passing in the fjord and NOT noise from preamp or mic.

SO ZOOM-guys when you read this, next firmware update you correct this so the files within the folder is named as originally set in the MENU , BY DATE & TIME  as it was on the old H4n !! 

Filename suggested is ZOOM0007_LR and if I like to change I have to do it manually like shown in the example 130922-103614+ species name. It should have this nameing in the first hand!

OTHER ISSUES

• I should also mention another funny bit, the headphones are monitoring the sound from the mics even if you are NOT recording, as long as you have the mics set for (touch L & R for the PIP-mic/X/Ys). This can be troublesome in field as you walk around listening to all the walking/scratching/branches++, and to turn off this sound you have to turn off the mics! So to start recording you have to turn on the chosen mics and then the Red Recording-knob once. This is really difficult in dark conditions!
• In the old H4n the sound only was monitored when you touched the Record once and started recording the second time you touched the button.

• Another stupid issue is that if you touch one of the XLR-inputs and you have no mic connected the H6 will make an empty soundfile Wav-format in the folder! This fills your SD-card with empty files and takes time to open the folders and delete - delete..

 

Hornøya - Seabird Paradise

Hornøya near the town of Vardø, Norway is an island located as far East you can get in Norway  and Western Europe (70.4N 31.2E), actually it's on the same longitude as Istanbul in Turkey or Kairo in Egypt. The seabird colonies on Hornøya is close to the Barents Sea and is rich of fish. This makes a perfect setting for the birds dependent of fish during breding season, and creates life for 10 thousands of gulls, auks and cormorants. Also predators as White-tailed Eagle and Gyr Falcon finds their food here in this seabird haven. The tourist office in Vardø is selling tickets for your boattrip to enter this fantastic Nature reserve on the footsteps of the Varangerfjord and the Barents Sea.
See more photos of seabirds at : Tromsofoto.net Tromsofoto seabirds
Species you will/could encounter are:
Common Eider
Steller's Eider

Kittiwake
Herring gull
Greater Black-backed gull
Razorbill
Guillemot
Brünnichs guillemot
Black guillemot
Puffin
Shag
Meadow pipit
Red-throated pipit
Common redpoll
Arctic redpoll
White-tailed Eagle
Gyr Falcon + + +

Hornøya near Vardø is a Seabird Paradise!

Brünnich's Guillemot - POLARLOMVI, Vardø

Razorbill -ALKE

Guillemot - LOMVI

Puffin - LUNDEFUGL

White-tailed Seaeagle - HAVØRN

Shag - TOPPSKARV

Puffin - LUNDEFUGL

Common Eider - ÆRFUGL

FRANCOLINS OF TANZANIA

On ground the Francolins runs around making a lot of noise and nice displays, they are most easily recognized by sounds from the undergrowth, and I add some recordings available at Xeno-canto. All photos taken in Serengeti and Tarangire NPs November 2011.COPYRIGHT Stein Ø. Nilsen tromsofoto.net
See more African birds at tromsofoto.net

GREY-BREASTED SPURFOWL

GREY-BREASTED SPURFOWL

YELLOW-NECKED SPURFOWL

RED-NECKED SPURFOWL

CRESTED FRANCOLIN

HAVHESTENS FLUKT - FLIGHT OF THE FULMAR

ALL PHOTOS FROM SVALBARD 2012

Afrikanske farger - Colours of Africa

Fuglene i Afrika er ofte svært fargerike, noen ganske surrealistisk. Et lite knippe av fargepaletten en kan oppleve i Kenya og Tanzania en norsk vinterdag. Alle bildene tatt november-desember 2011.

BLÅ - BLUE Lesser Blue-eared Starling

LILLA - LILAC Lilac-breasted Roller

RØD - RED Red-billed Oxpecker - Rødnebbet Oksehakker

SOT - SOOT Sooty Chat

HVIT - WHITE Egretthegre Egret Heron

GUL - YELLOW Bergvever - Baglafecht Weaver