Mingchi Forest, August 2022
Minchi Recreation Area, Yilan County, 14th August 2022
明池遊樂區, 宜蘭縣, 2022年8月14日
Mingchi sits at an elevation of just over 1,000 meters. During the summer, it becomes a popular retreat from the heat, making it difficult to find a truly quiet place to record. Based on several disappointing trips in the past—only discovering after returning home that most of my recordings were contaminated by human noise—I decided this time to record during the hours when most visitors were asleep, from late night until dawn.
At around 3:15 a.m., I set out in search of a suitable recording location. As I walked, I heard a bird calling in the middle of the night. Although the spot wasn't ideal, I immediately set up my recording equipment. Only a few seconds after I started recording, I heard the call of a Reeves's muntjac nearby. It continued calling for nearly three minutes. I never caught sight of it, but judging from the changing volume of its calls, it seemed to be slowly moving away from where I was standing.
After the muntjac fell silent, we continued uphill. Although I was wearing a headlamp, the forest canopy blocked most of the light. Having never walked through a forest at night before, I found that even on the trail I could barely see beyond a short distance. Once I reached the point where I no longer felt comfortable continuing, I stopped at a level spot and made a ten-minute test recording. Satisfied that the location was quiet enough, I left the recorder in place and walked back to the trailhead to spend some time looking at the stars.
Around 5:10 to 5:20 a.m., as the sky began to brighten, the dawn chorus gradually unfolded. It began with a single White-whiskered Laughingthrush, and before long an entire flock had joined in. Although I had listened to many dawn chorus recordings made by other recordists, this was the first time I had recorded one myself. No matter how many recordings you hear, the experience of standing there in person is something that no digital playback can truly reproduce.
Most of the dawn chorus in this recording is made up of White-whiskered Laughingthrushes. In the distance, you can also hear frogs and the occasional call of a Reeves's muntjac. Toward the end of the recording, the first cicadas of the morning begin to sing. I have heard the same species around Yangmingshan as well.
At around 6:30 a.m., when only scattered birdsong remained, I returned to retrieve my equipment. Recording outside the hours of normal human activity greatly reduced human-made noise, but aircraft could still be heard passing overhead from time to time. In the end, the amount of completely uninterrupted natural sound I captured throughout the entire night totaled less than twenty minutes.
One characteristic shared by all of my recordings from Mingchi is a persistent low-frequency hum in the background. It becomes quite noticeable when listening at higher volume. Curiously, I never noticed it while I was there, so I still can't tell whether it was a natural sound or something human-made.
📍 Location: 24.655208, 121.472738 Yilan County, Taiwan
🌤 Weather: 20°C, Cloudy, 84% Humidity
🌿 Ambient Sound: Birds, Cicadas, Formosan muntjac
🎤 Setup 1: Lom mikroUsi (Baffled AB), Sony A10
🎤 Setup 2: Sennheiser MKH8040/30 (DMS), Sound Devices Mixpre-6II
明池森林, 2022年8月
明池的海拔大約1000公尺多，夏季時是人們避暑的去處，因此並不容易找到安靜的錄音地點，依照之前幾次失敗的錄音經驗，常常回家後發現大多數的錄音都有人為的噪音，所以這次選擇在大多數人在休息的夜間到凌晨這段時間。
大約凌晨03:15出發尋找錄音點，走著走著聽到一隻鳥在半夜裡叫，也顧不得地點並不理想便架起錄音器材，錄了沒幾秒後忽然聽到山羌的叫聲，而且距離不遠，山羌總共叫了將近3分鐘，雖然眼睛看不到，但以音量來看應該是慢慢遠離我所在的位置。
錄完山羌後，我們繼續往高處走，雖然有開頭燈，但森林遮蔽了光線，加上從來沒有在夜裡的森林行走的經驗，走在步道上，視野依然無法看遠方；在我覺得有點害怕而不想繼續走下去時，便停下來找個平坦的地點，先試錄了10分鐘覺得應該沒問題後，便將錄音機留在原地，然後回到步道入口處看看星空。
5:10-5:20天色漸亮時，清晨的鳥鳴(dawn chorus)便開始了，起先是一隻白耳畫眉開始叫，不久後就是整群一起合唱；這是我第一次錄到清晨的鳥鳴，儘管已經聽過很多錄音師的錄音，現場的體驗是難以用播放數位檔案來複製的。
從錄音中可以發現這段dawn chorus多數是白耳畫眉，遠處可以聽到蛙及山羌，錄音的結尾可以聽到暮蟬開始叫，在陽明山上也可以聽到相同的聲音。
大約6:30時只剩下零星的鳥鳴後我便將設備回收，這次選擇在人類活動時間以外的時段想要錄到無干擾的自然聲音，只是明池仍然有飛機不時的噪音，一整晚連續無干擾的片段其實不到20分鐘。
這次所有明池的錄音，背景中常駐著一種低頻的噪音，音量調大時可以清楚聽到，然而在現場時並沒有注意到，所以無法確定是自然的還是人為的。