This recording captures the sound of a flock of Cockatiels (around 20-30 birds) flying past the mic's and landing in nearby trees. The flock continues to call to each other, as birds fly off to feed on the ground near by.

Recording Equipment: AT3032 omni mics, SBRS stereo rig, Sound Devices 722 recorder

Mungo Woolshed from the sand dunes
We visited Mungo National Park a few days after heavy rain so the self guided driving tours were closed and we were restricted to the walks from the visitors centre and main campground. This didn't stop us from enjoying our stay and seeing some interesting birds.

On a previous visit to the park we stayed in the Belah Camp which is a lovely remote and quiet camp but this time we decided on a little more luxury and stayed at the newly refurbished shearers quarters. The shearers quarters made a great base for the visit, apart from the clean rooms there was a fully equipped kitchen, heating/aircon, and a nice hot shower.

We arrived in the afternoon and after exploring the nearby Mungo Woolshed we took the Foreshore walk which lead out over bluebush to a Mallee and Cypress Pine covered sand dune. We soon saw signs of life in the bluebush it wasn't long before Southern Whiteface were seen perching in the tops of the bluebush. We heard fairywren calling and scanned around to find a few brown females, it took around five minutes looking before we finally saw the beautiful male White-winged Fairy-wren.

Lunette

Closer to the sandunes a party of Chestnut-crowed Babblers were foraging in the bluebush near to the base of the sand dunes and were then seen flying up into a Cypress Pine, where it looked as if they had a nest. The woodland on the sandunes seemed to be a parrot haven, Mallee Ringnecks and Blue Bonnets where foraging and sheltering in the trees, as we walked around to the far side of the dune many cockatiel were resting, preening and calling softly to each other. Out on the lake bed Pink Cockatoos and Little Corella were feeding.

Around 4pm we drove out to look at the Walls of China lunette . On the drive we searched for Orange Chat but did not find any, however we did see White-fronted Chat and Australasian Pipit. We walked out on the boardwalk that leads to the lunette and sand dunes, on a previous visit we saw Red-backed Kingfisher, Pallid Cuckoo and Black-faced Woodswallow here, today the only birds visible were a lovely flock of White-back Swallow and a couple of Singing Honeyeaters.

Shearers QuartersThe following morning Paul went out to the sand dunes to record some of the parrots and cockatiels while I relaxed in the sun at the shearers quarters and sipped my coffee while watching the Pink Cockatoos wheeling around for about an hour before they settled down to feed in the bluebush.

2010 Mungo National Park trip list

2007 Mungo National Park trip list

Information on Mungo National Park

View from the cultural/fauna walk

The living desert is situated 12 kilometers north of Broken Hilll on Nine Mile Road. The sanctuary contains an arboretum, a cultural/fauna trail and a 'sculpture symposium' all situated in the rocky slopes of the range lands. After recent rains the hills were awash with purple and yellow daisies and many of the plants in the arboretum were in full bloom.

Sturt Desert PeasWe had heard that Chiming Wedgebill could be seen at the sanctuary so decided to try the cultural/fauna walk trail to look for them, the trail leads up the rocky slopes and although we had seen quite a few birds in the car park only Singing and Spiny Cheeked Honeyeaters were seen on the windy slopes, I suspect that most sensible birds would be sheltering in the gorges. As the path lead to the lower parts of the slopes we could hear Chiming Wedgebills calling from below, however we decided to respect the many signs asking visitors not to walk off the paths and continued on to the arboretum where we again heard the Chiming Wedgebills, quite a distance from the path, near to the base of the hill which was also close to the entrance. We decided to search the area just outside the entrance and were finally rewarded with good views of a Chiming Wedgebill running through the grass and another sitting in a Mulga bush.

Living Desert trip list

Information on the Living Desert Park

This recording was made at Gundabooka NP shortly after dawn. I'd initially positioned the mikes in a spot that had few birds calling so I moved the mikes about 100m to a stop just off the road to Bennet's Gorge where Grey Shrike Thrush were calling. Species that can be heard in the background include Crested Bellbird, Rufous Songlark and Blacked Eared Cuckoo and Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo.

The recording was made with an Oade Brothers modified Tascam HDP2 and a pair of Audio Technica AT3032 omnidirectional Mics.

This clip is a after and before comparison of the use of noise reduction on nature sound recordings. While the Izotope RX denoiser plugin is quite effective at eliminating background hiss examining the clip using a sonogram shows that some fine detail in the recording is also lost.