April 4, 2024 • 30 mins
Welcome Home Everybody!
In this episode Rob and I have invited our group of young people from Sidestrand School to Sheringham Park. A regular venue for us, we make the education centre at the park our base for today’s adventures.
On this trip we’re hoping to be able to watch, listen to and learn more about the bird life of the park, particularly those that visit the feeders at the education centre. We also hoped to take a walk through the park’s extensive pine woodland and do some communal listening activities….at least as long as the taps of this wet spring remain off!
LINKS
Sheringham Park
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
In this episode Rob and I have invited our group of young people from Sidestrand School to Sheringham Park. A regular venue for us, we make the education centre at the park our base for today’s adventures.
On this trip we’re hoping to be able to watch, listen to and learn more about the bird life of the park, particularly those that visit the feeders at the education centre. We also hoped to take a walk through the park’s extensive pine woodland and do some communal listening activities….at least as long as the taps of this wet spring remain off!
LINKS
Sheringham Park
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:30):
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo the Home Sound Show. My name
is Martin and I'm a field recordistand teacher. I'm the creator of the
Home Sounds Project and your co hostfor the show along with Rob. Hello
everybody. My name is Rob andI'm an educator and naturalist. I work
(00:50):
for the National Trust as part oftheir Children and Young People Hub based at
Sheringham Park in Norfolk. The HomeSound Show invites everyone to become act environmental
listeners. Each month we visit adifferent location, seeking out seasonal natural sound
and focusing on a different theme.For this episode, Rob and I have
(01:11):
invited our group of young people fromSidestround School to Sheringham Park, regular venue
for us, we make the EducationCenter at the park our base for today's
adventures. On this trip, we'rehoping to be able to watch, listen
to, and learn more about thebird life of the park, particularly those
(01:32):
that visit the bird feeders at theeducation Center. We also hope to take
a walk through the park's extensive pinewoodland and do some communal listening activities at
least as long as the taps ofthe wet spring remain off. After meeting
the group in the car park,we walk them round to the education center.
(01:55):
As if already somehow aware of ourplans for the day. Some of
the group were draw on towards awillow feeder screen, peering through the cutouts
and using some small binoculars. Thegroup stood and watched white water kind the
sort you see what at the onein your group? What was you had?
(02:23):
What my wife or the there together? They need to come what was
gone? No, it's too bad, I thought, a little water.
I I down stairs my hair afterwe have mm hmmm, can you think
(03:02):
how do when we get when wego back to the lane, which way
does it go? This way?Yeah? Thanks? Yeah, h m
(03:30):
hm. That's something just on theground. Okay. I think what we're
gonna do is move on a bit. We're gonna go and we're gonna look.
I think Mark is gonna talk usthrough some different sorts of microphone,
and what we're gonna do is workout a way of micing up the bird
(03:52):
feeds so we can listen in tothem. Now. The way we're gonna
do it, I think, isget the microphones, set them all up,
and then move away, because obviouslyyou are standing here. Even though
some birds are coming in and cleeding. It's putting some birds off. So
when we're moved away, I'm surethere'll be more birds coming in. So
that's that's so, what sort ofsounds apart from the apart from the church
(04:19):
and there singing, what sort ofsounds of the birds actually making them not
coming in? You can hear,I mean, you actually hear their wing
and maybe maybe they sort on thetree they have landing on the tree,
or maybe on the and the chair. Well, we're not gonna make them,
(04:40):
but we're gonna we're gonna deploy them. We're gonna put them. We're
gonna work out where to put themand put them all up and run a
cable and the plants. Okay,let's go. Yeah. We soon got
(05:06):
to work setting up the microphones onthe bird feeders. We split ourselves into
small groups, each group with aspecific job, one to place the microphones,
one to run the cable to theeducation center, and one to connect
everything up. We decided to usetwo types of microphones on the feeders.
The first of these was a smallmono omnidirectional air microphone for capturing the ambient
(05:30):
sounds around the feeders. The secondwas a contact microphone, a form of
microphone that senses audio vibrations through contactwith solid objects, in this case the
metal casings holding the feed back inside. We were now able only to hear
and not see what was happening.No, no, believe me that.
(06:08):
Again, inspired by what we werehearing, Rob had the idea to place
(08:41):
a large stuffed owl he kept inthe center out by the feeders to see
what would happen. Turns out owlsare not as popular with their fellow birds
as they are with humans. Suppthe gathering alarm calls from a variety of
(10:30):
different birds warned their compatriots of thedanger and hoped to frighten the owl away.
It was a tactic that worked,as on returning outside to collect the
owl, you found it face downon the floor, glad of its stuffed
only steak. The owl had beenknocked over if something didn't like him.
(11:13):
With the our safely returned inside,we kept listening to the microphones and at
the same time played some bird eyedgames using sounds, books and cardboard cutouts.
Six old, so many plans towork out, So that is one
of the blue tits. I thinkif I was in the day so great
(12:00):
it. Yeah, so these areare the live sounds coming in from those
mics, now, yeah, okay, yeah, so I think these are
(12:26):
mainly blue tits and great tits.So they make that kind of that's when
they're there's two at the feeder andthey it's their kind of slightly yeah,
kind of slightly aggressive call. AndI think that must be a bird land
landing on the actual metal. Andyou can see what a what an imp
(13:00):
at the sound of the plane overheadthat has Yeah, can we hear any
wing beats? That's what I'm gotgoing for. You might have to wait
(13:20):
for the plane to go over.What we're listening to some stuff If you
want to take a seat and graba bird book. The morning's activity is
over, we broke for a wellearned lunch. After some quality listening downtime,
(13:45):
we headed off into the woodland earsopen right, I'll speak about the
plan for this afternoon. We've gotabout all ninety minutes and like that.
What we're going to do is weare going to walk down this valley path
(14:05):
which is just a little bit quieterthan the main drive, drag down the
into the into the park, andthe plan will be you'll go and kick
ourselves out with some headphones. Soeveryone's got a pair of headphones. Then
we'll walk down into the woods andI think we're going to We've got some
mics, various different microphones. We'regoing to do some group listening. So
(14:26):
we're all well, various people pluggedinto the same mic. Okay, and
we'll see what we can hear.Does that sound like a plan, Well,
it's our plan, so we betterit's a plan. It does sound
like a plan. Give us that. Okay, let's go and get the
Let's go and get the headphones.Let's go. So you like listening to
(14:52):
the sound of your own voice,Okay, but you don't, okay,
Yeah, yeah, Well I thinkthe reason why we I think we sound
funny is because our ears are behindthe position of our ears had a really
funny conversation, so we never hearourselves as we actually sound. Remember also
(15:16):
what we have. We have afirearm in class, but at one point
the fire alarm was going off andwe didn't actually hear. Yeah, we
were watching racing that mister Chadwick puton. Okay, we've got mister Chadwick
is doing some twitch. He's doingsome twitching. We're looks of it.
(15:41):
Twitching is is that when you goto spot rare birds, it's called twitching.
So the nuts actually are kind ofare there it goes I think,
Oh, no, I don't know. Bigger than that. They're kind of
mid size between bigger than a blute, it smaller than a starling. They've
(16:03):
got a beautiful blue feathers on theirback and an orange feathers on their belly.
Bit similar to woodpecker in terms ofthey've got a sharp beak. And
yeah, as the name suggests,they like to get nuts. They get
a nut. Hazel nuts are afavorite. They jam it in a crack
(16:25):
in the bark and then break itopen with their with their beak. That's
how they get their food. Butthey are quite partial to the peanuts that
we've got hanging up, So thatone was probably calling. They pop in,
they pop. They're a bit morewear in some of other birds,
so they come in really quickly,grab something and then they go. So
(16:47):
we'll have to keep our eyes pilledfor them, but we can pick them
up if we know they're call Okay, let's let's carry them to the bird
feeders. Yeah, they spot theyYeah, they spiral around the tree,
(17:41):
and it said that the tree groupsgo up and then attaches go down.
Yeah, the whistling sound is then attatch. That one did you flew
up? There no chaffins, thatwas with a bit. It's still got
a similar color on its breast.But there is an attack somewhere close.
Oh there's the n attatch. Yeah, so it's it's yeah, it's cooling.
(18:03):
It's just yeah, it's just kindof they sort of hop up the
branch. They're quite shy, themattaches. If there's someone whre he goes,
if there's someone sort of standing aroundthe feeders, they don't like to
go down, and then they justcome in grab grab a seed, and
then they're off. Okay, webetter better get back to what was Let's
(18:57):
see, we're going to see thewood pick. So where is want you
to be? You got it?So the place to look is right at
the tops of the tree where you'vegot the dead branches, dead hollow branches.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.Yeah, you got it. Oh,
(19:18):
there's to look. There's two Sothese are great spotted woodpeckers. There's
one in the near tree here andthere was another one on the other they're
both can't see him just at themoment, but as soon as they move.
(20:15):
They're often small, and people thinkpeople think of woodpeckers and they think
it might be an enormous bird,and actually they they're quite small really,
even though the green ones are alittle bit bigg I mean, might we
might hear one of those as well? Potentially do get them here. There's
one of them that doesn't make thatsounds which one is? So so the
(20:37):
greenwood bigger doesn't drum on the ground, or if it might drun, but
not very often. And I didn'tmean that there were of the ones with
(21:18):
the lesser and great spotted, butthe lesser spotted is now really very very
rare. Yeah, yeah, veryrare when you're more dog. Sorry,
we can more dogs numbers haven't Wow, Yeah, well I reckon we can.
We can reverse that trend we hadthat was drumming on chimney and then
(21:44):
my your chimney that didn't know whatthe noise We found out my mom and
dad found out it was trying toattract to mate. Oh there you go,
So woodpecker drumming. I've never heardof that before. It could well
be a male and a female,butotentially, yeah, thanks for the A
(22:04):
bit bit of drop, a bitof is it is not love? There
he goes, there's well back upif it goes. Okay, let's keep
(22:27):
going, make our way down.See if we spotted the thing us on
route. Yeah, we've got someflower seeds and peanuts of the two.
Yeah yeah, yeah. On theway we saw three one jacks from school
(22:49):
just on the on on the onthe bus at the school. Obviously not
on the bus, that's just ridiculous. But yeah, there's I mean there's
loads around here. Actually when wego out we take people at nights sometimes
and yeah, there's just loads ofmonk jacks all over the place. The
(23:11):
last activity of the day was totry and listen all together to the same
sound source. A small group armedwith a stereo microphone rig headed up a
bank trading a long cable. Afterthem, a second group stayed at the
bottom of the bank with an audiorecorder. Once settled on their listening spot,
both groups donned headphones and tuned in, or at least tried to m
(24:23):
one thousand my name Charlie doing darknoise. You're gonna hear the ticket?
Can you hear something else? Whatcan you hear? Now, M.
(24:57):
But you can hear you the theheadphones are working, definitely, yes,
try the rustling of the jacket allthe leaves. M. Why what's happened?
(25:23):
We can I can't hear I justsaid I can eat summer. Should
we unplug? Don't to run thatfall? So fall? Mm hmmm.
(25:53):
How long was left in the tropNot too much longer than this is fun?
Can we stay overnight? No,we don't have any camping staff.
We can stay in the top ofthe tree. No, it'll be listened
(26:14):
out. We made our way backto the education center. Our timing was
just right. There's only a fewminutes after the group had got on their
bus and were safely heading back toschool, those wet spring taps opened yet
again. You've been listening to.If you'd like to keep listening, visit
(28:52):
homesounds dot org, where you canfind all previous episodes of the Home Sounds
Show, as well as many moreopportunities to actively listen in numerous ways to
support and get involved with the HomeSounds project. Alternatively, visit Popylandradio dot
co dot uk and look for theHome Sounds Show, which is broadcast every
(29:14):
Wednesday at one pm or the RiverlandsShow, which broadcasts live sounds from Woodland
in Felbury and the silver Gate Streamin Blickling every Wednesday evening at ten pm.
Links relating to this episode can befound in the description We'll be back
again next month. Welcome home,everybody,
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo the Home Sound Show. My name
is Martin and I'm a field recordistand teacher. I'm the creator of the
Home Sounds Project and your co hostfor the show along with Rob. Hello
everybody. My name is Rob andI'm an educator and naturalist. I work
(00:50):
for the National Trust as part oftheir Children and Young People Hub based at
Sheringham Park in Norfolk. The HomeSound Show invites everyone to become act environmental
listeners. Each month we visit adifferent location, seeking out seasonal natural sound
and focusing on a different theme.For this episode, Rob and I have
(01:11):
invited our group of young people fromSidestround School to Sheringham Park, regular venue
for us, we make the EducationCenter at the park our base for today's
adventures. On this trip, we'rehoping to be able to watch, listen
to, and learn more about thebird life of the park, particularly those
(01:32):
that visit the bird feeders at theeducation Center. We also hope to take
a walk through the park's extensive pinewoodland and do some communal listening activities at
least as long as the taps ofthe wet spring remain off. After meeting
the group in the car park,we walk them round to the education center.
(01:55):
As if already somehow aware of ourplans for the day. Some of
the group were draw on towards awillow feeder screen, peering through the cutouts
and using some small binoculars. Thegroup stood and watched white water kind the
sort you see what at the onein your group? What was you had?
(02:23):
What my wife or the there together? They need to come what was
gone? No, it's too bad, I thought, a little water.
I I down stairs my hair afterwe have mm hmmm, can you think
(03:02):
how do when we get when wego back to the lane, which way
does it go? This way?Yeah? Thanks? Yeah, h m
(03:30):
hm. That's something just on theground. Okay. I think what we're
gonna do is move on a bit. We're gonna go and we're gonna look.
I think Mark is gonna talk usthrough some different sorts of microphone,
and what we're gonna do is workout a way of micing up the bird
(03:52):
feeds so we can listen in tothem. Now. The way we're gonna
do it, I think, isget the microphones, set them all up,
and then move away, because obviouslyyou are standing here. Even though
some birds are coming in and cleeding. It's putting some birds off. So
when we're moved away, I'm surethere'll be more birds coming in. So
that's that's so, what sort ofsounds apart from the apart from the church
(04:19):
and there singing, what sort ofsounds of the birds actually making them not
coming in? You can hear,I mean, you actually hear their wing
and maybe maybe they sort on thetree they have landing on the tree,
or maybe on the and the chair. Well, we're not gonna make them,
(04:40):
but we're gonna we're gonna deploy them. We're gonna put them. We're
gonna work out where to put themand put them all up and run a
cable and the plants. Okay,let's go. Yeah. We soon got
(05:06):
to work setting up the microphones onthe bird feeders. We split ourselves into
small groups, each group with aspecific job, one to place the microphones,
one to run the cable to theeducation center, and one to connect
everything up. We decided to usetwo types of microphones on the feeders.
The first of these was a smallmono omnidirectional air microphone for capturing the ambient
(05:30):
sounds around the feeders. The secondwas a contact microphone, a form of
microphone that senses audio vibrations through contactwith solid objects, in this case the
metal casings holding the feed back inside. We were now able only to hear
and not see what was happening.No, no, believe me that.
(06:08):
Again, inspired by what we werehearing, Rob had the idea to place
(08:41):
a large stuffed owl he kept inthe center out by the feeders to see
what would happen. Turns out owlsare not as popular with their fellow birds
as they are with humans. Suppthe gathering alarm calls from a variety of
(10:30):
different birds warned their compatriots of thedanger and hoped to frighten the owl away.
It was a tactic that worked,as on returning outside to collect the
owl, you found it face downon the floor, glad of its stuffed
only steak. The owl had beenknocked over if something didn't like him.
(11:13):
With the our safely returned inside,we kept listening to the microphones and at
the same time played some bird eyedgames using sounds, books and cardboard cutouts.
Six old, so many plans towork out, So that is one
of the blue tits. I thinkif I was in the day so great
(12:00):
it. Yeah, so these areare the live sounds coming in from those
mics, now, yeah, okay, yeah, so I think these are
(12:26):
mainly blue tits and great tits.So they make that kind of that's when
they're there's two at the feeder andthey it's their kind of slightly yeah,
kind of slightly aggressive call. AndI think that must be a bird land
landing on the actual metal. Andyou can see what a what an imp
(13:00):
at the sound of the plane overheadthat has Yeah, can we hear any
wing beats? That's what I'm gotgoing for. You might have to wait
(13:20):
for the plane to go over.What we're listening to some stuff If you
want to take a seat and graba bird book. The morning's activity is
over, we broke for a wellearned lunch. After some quality listening downtime,
(13:45):
we headed off into the woodland earsopen right, I'll speak about the
plan for this afternoon. We've gotabout all ninety minutes and like that.
What we're going to do is weare going to walk down this valley path
(14:05):
which is just a little bit quieterthan the main drive, drag down the
into the into the park, andthe plan will be you'll go and kick
ourselves out with some headphones. Soeveryone's got a pair of headphones. Then
we'll walk down into the woods andI think we're going to We've got some
mics, various different microphones. We'regoing to do some group listening. So
(14:26):
we're all well, various people pluggedinto the same mic. Okay, and
we'll see what we can hear.Does that sound like a plan, Well,
it's our plan, so we betterit's a plan. It does sound
like a plan. Give us that. Okay, let's go and get the
Let's go and get the headphones.Let's go. So you like listening to
(14:52):
the sound of your own voice,Okay, but you don't, okay,
Yeah, yeah, Well I thinkthe reason why we I think we sound
funny is because our ears are behindthe position of our ears had a really
funny conversation, so we never hearourselves as we actually sound. Remember also
(15:16):
what we have. We have afirearm in class, but at one point
the fire alarm was going off andwe didn't actually hear. Yeah, we
were watching racing that mister Chadwick puton. Okay, we've got mister Chadwick
is doing some twitch. He's doingsome twitching. We're looks of it.
(15:41):
Twitching is is that when you goto spot rare birds, it's called twitching.
So the nuts actually are kind ofare there it goes I think,
Oh, no, I don't know. Bigger than that. They're kind of
mid size between bigger than a blute, it smaller than a starling. They've
(16:03):
got a beautiful blue feathers on theirback and an orange feathers on their belly.
Bit similar to woodpecker in terms ofthey've got a sharp beak. And
yeah, as the name suggests,they like to get nuts. They get
a nut. Hazel nuts are afavorite. They jam it in a crack
(16:25):
in the bark and then break itopen with their with their beak. That's
how they get their food. Butthey are quite partial to the peanuts that
we've got hanging up, So thatone was probably calling. They pop in,
they pop. They're a bit morewear in some of other birds,
so they come in really quickly,grab something and then they go. So
(16:47):
we'll have to keep our eyes pilledfor them, but we can pick them
up if we know they're call Okay, let's let's carry them to the bird
feeders. Yeah, they spot theyYeah, they spiral around the tree,
(17:41):
and it said that the tree groupsgo up and then attaches go down.
Yeah, the whistling sound is then attatch. That one did you flew
up? There no chaffins, thatwas with a bit. It's still got
a similar color on its breast.But there is an attack somewhere close.
Oh there's the n attatch. Yeah, so it's it's yeah, it's cooling.
(18:03):
It's just yeah, it's just kindof they sort of hop up the
branch. They're quite shy, themattaches. If there's someone whre he goes,
if there's someone sort of standing aroundthe feeders, they don't like to
go down, and then they justcome in grab grab a seed, and
then they're off. Okay, webetter better get back to what was Let's
(18:57):
see, we're going to see thewood pick. So where is want you
to be? You got it?So the place to look is right at
the tops of the tree where you'vegot the dead branches, dead hollow branches.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.Yeah, you got it. Oh,
(19:18):
there's to look. There's two Sothese are great spotted woodpeckers. There's
one in the near tree here andthere was another one on the other they're
both can't see him just at themoment, but as soon as they move.
(20:15):
They're often small, and people thinkpeople think of woodpeckers and they think
it might be an enormous bird,and actually they they're quite small really,
even though the green ones are alittle bit bigg I mean, might we
might hear one of those as well? Potentially do get them here. There's
one of them that doesn't make thatsounds which one is? So so the
(20:37):
greenwood bigger doesn't drum on the ground, or if it might drun, but
not very often. And I didn'tmean that there were of the ones with
(21:18):
the lesser and great spotted, butthe lesser spotted is now really very very
rare. Yeah, yeah, veryrare when you're more dog. Sorry,
we can more dogs numbers haven't Wow, Yeah, well I reckon we can.
We can reverse that trend we hadthat was drumming on chimney and then
(21:44):
my your chimney that didn't know whatthe noise We found out my mom and
dad found out it was trying toattract to mate. Oh there you go,
So woodpecker drumming. I've never heardof that before. It could well
be a male and a female,butotentially, yeah, thanks for the A
(22:04):
bit bit of drop, a bitof is it is not love? There
he goes, there's well back upif it goes. Okay, let's keep
(22:27):
going, make our way down.See if we spotted the thing us on
route. Yeah, we've got someflower seeds and peanuts of the two.
Yeah yeah, yeah. On theway we saw three one jacks from school
(22:49):
just on the on on the onthe bus at the school. Obviously not
on the bus, that's just ridiculous. But yeah, there's I mean there's
loads around here. Actually when wego out we take people at nights sometimes
and yeah, there's just loads ofmonk jacks all over the place. The
(23:11):
last activity of the day was totry and listen all together to the same
sound source. A small group armedwith a stereo microphone rig headed up a
bank trading a long cable. Afterthem, a second group stayed at the
bottom of the bank with an audiorecorder. Once settled on their listening spot,
both groups donned headphones and tuned in, or at least tried to m
(24:23):
one thousand my name Charlie doing darknoise. You're gonna hear the ticket?
Can you hear something else? Whatcan you hear? Now, M.
(24:57):
But you can hear you the theheadphones are working, definitely, yes,
try the rustling of the jacket allthe leaves. M. Why what's happened?
(25:23):
We can I can't hear I justsaid I can eat summer. Should
we unplug? Don't to run thatfall? So fall? Mm hmmm.
(25:53):
How long was left in the tropNot too much longer than this is fun?
Can we stay overnight? No,we don't have any camping staff.
We can stay in the top ofthe tree. No, it'll be listened
(26:14):
out. We made our way backto the education center. Our timing was
just right. There's only a fewminutes after the group had got on their
bus and were safely heading back toschool, those wet spring taps opened yet
again. You've been listening to.If you'd like to keep listening, visit
(28:52):
homesounds dot org, where you canfind all previous episodes of the Home Sounds
Show, as well as many moreopportunities to actively listen in numerous ways to
support and get involved with the HomeSounds project. Alternatively, visit Popylandradio dot
co dot uk and look for theHome Sounds Show, which is broadcast every
(29:14):
Wednesday at one pm or the RiverlandsShow, which broadcasts live sounds from Woodland
in Felbury and the silver Gate Streamin Blickling every Wednesday evening at ten pm.
Links relating to this episode can befound in the description We'll be back
again next month. Welcome home,everybody,
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