This library was by far the hardest to record. Eurasian Cranes, also called Common Cranes are beautiful, really easy to scare big birds.

I finally got a chance to record them. Actually it wasn’t my first attempt. One year ago I’ve tried to do the same thing, but because of lack of experience, I’ve ended up with bad recordings.

I did not wanted to repeat my mistakes, so I’ve spent a whole night in the wild, really tested all my gear and own patience, got bit by million mosquitoes to record those animals. You can hear the results in the preview above.

All the sounds have HPF set to about 100Hz with high slope, because of the distant trains passing by from time to time. It doesn’t affect the sound of the cranes, there’s no information in low spectrum range.

Recording animals is completely different experience, and what I’ve learned is that You have to accept and take whatever You’ve been given. It was impossible for me to go closer, or avoid the sound of wind, just because few more steps would scare the birds, so recordings are really natural. Also I had to wait for all the birds, so the files I’ve recorded sounds different, because of different amount of birds.

When I got to a location I was alone with just few ducks. Cranes got there later, in groups counting from 30 to 200 birds.

I’ve used Sound Devices 702 and 2 Oktavas MK012 set in ORTF.

Everything was set in the reed, in deep mud, and the Cranes were standing about 40m away.

All files were tagged in Basehead Ultra.

Metadata includes key words describing every file, information about microphones used during recording, category, subcategory and more.