Tweetie Bird Feeding

For a month now I have been hearing this faint and frantic bird tweeting when at the south side of the house. I knew there was a birds nest around there somewhere but could not locate it. The chirping was very quiet and high pitched as they were very young chicks in the nest. I decided to wait until they were more mature to try and record them. Now they are louder and deeper in pitch than before and I was able to locate them in a small shrub very close to the outside wall of the house. Every time the mother fed them they went crazy like they were at a concert or something.

My first attempt at recording the little buggers was a failure I think because the microphone was on a stand and the mother bird thought it was a animal or something and would not feed them. I gave up quickly as to not disrupt her feeding pattern. I then thought if I put the microphone in the shrub next to the nest maybe she would not freak out as bad. Turned out I was right. This morning was very quiet and I heard the chicks as I strolled by and they did not stop. Maybe they were close to leaving the nest and were more mature about having a microphone that looked like a cat next to them (brave!)

I carefully set the Sennheiser MKH-416 in the shrub next to the nest, set up the video camera, began recording and walked away. I made sure I was no where near the nest as the mother kept a close eye on her nest. In the past as soon as I was within a few yards of her castle she would fly around and guard her babies. I waiting inside the house and watched from a window and hoped a car would not pass by when she swooped in to drop the food delivery off. I was lucky, she came back a few times and I was able to get some clean recordings.

These sounds will be in a new sound effects library called: “Bats, Birds and Bugs” coming out soon. Enjoy! -Frank