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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torchepot" data-source="post: 3608870" data-attributes="member: 123265">Seems like an ideal location here to record nocturnal calls. No neighbours, cars, barking dogs, sirens etc.etc. seems like all I needed to do was buy a suitable recorder, leave it out overnight and then whiz through the hours of silence looking for the odd call. It's not really working out like that!The problem is it's SO noisy - I just never tuned in to it before.Pretty much constant cricket noise (and other insects) throughout the night, glis glis making a racket on every recording (31x 50 minute files so far) lots of bats, tawny owls and lots of things going crunch in the night.The chances of me being able to pick up a bird call flying over are looking slim unless I can find a way to analyse the recordings better.The good news is that I took a chance on the Tascam DR-05, £79 ish from Amazon and so far it seems like a great little machine.It takes micro SDHC cards up to 32Gb and can be powered externally. One feature that looks useful is that you can limit file size and it just carries on recording the next one with no break. Once (if ever) I get to grips with Audacity it should make file size much more manageable (and it's easier to keep a track of where events are). I was a bit put off by the name Tascam tbh but then I found out it's made by TEAC.I've got an old SE66 mic but so far haven't used it - this could help reduce a lot of the background noise and will be the next thing to try.So far the only way I can find to locate interesting sounds is to fast forward through the recording in the machine and listen with headphones. This works for loud or lengthy calls but not sure how I'm going to pick up a passing wader or worse a small passerine.Any suggestions for improving my chances would be very welcome - I'd be particularly interested in hearing how people are using Audacity to zero in on stuff. Things like which view to use, whether to use filters?I can see that this could easily take up a lot of time - but it's also a lot of fun. I've got some interesting recordings already - the most curious of which is a strange electronic chirp from some unidentified bat which roosted very close to the recorder. Also got some good owl calls, a barking roe deer, tons of dormouse calls including a prolonged recording of one eating one of my nestboxes! The only bird call I've managed to luck into while listening to something else was a passing Grey Heron.</blockquote>

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