冬季的觀霧森林 Winter in Guanwu Forest

新竹觀霧森林遊樂區我只去過2次

先說結論，我認為這裡並不適合自然錄音。我不是要說觀霧森林是個不自然的地方，相反地，這裡森林茂密且原始，是享受大自然的好去處。但從自然聲音的角度，這裡卻是災難級別的，原因在於頻繁的飛機引擎噪音，或許是桃園機場起降的飛機都會經過這段空域，不論白天或夜間，幾乎不存在完整的30(甚至大多是15)分鐘寧靜時刻

I’ve only been to the Guanwu Forest Recreation Area in Hsinchu twice.

To start with the conclusion, I don’t think this is a suitable place for nature recording. I’m not saying that Guanwu Forest is unnatural—in fact, it’s dense and pristine, a great place to enjoy nature. But from the perspective of natural sounds, it’s a disaster due to the frequent noise from airplane engines. Perhaps the flight paths from Taoyuan Airport pass through this airspace, because whether day or night, there are hardly any full 30-minute (and most often only 15-minute) periods of quiet.

觀霧森林的錄音，大約60%都是擾人的飛機聲或其他人為噪音，另外大多數是無聲的內容(這是我這幾年在野外錄音發現的另一個狀況，台灣中高海拔的森林異常地安靜，或許是人類活動造成生物棲息地減少，還是中高海拔原本生物活動稀疏，就不得而知了)，去除掉這些內容後，最後只剩下不到1%的錄音是有趣的，這次我選擇只分享「理想的」聲音，以下是擷取自我2022年1月的一段錄音，刪除掉噪音干擾的部分後只剩下約4分鐘連續的自然聲景：

About 60% of recordings from Guanwu Forest are disturbed by airplanes or other human-made noise, while most of the rest are silent (this is another phenomenon I’ve noticed in my years of field recording: Taiwan’s mid- to high-altitude forests are unusually quiet. Whether this is due to human activity reducing habitats or simply because wildlife activity is naturally sparse at these altitudes, I don’t know). After removing these parts, less than 1% of the recordings are actually interesting. For this time, I chose to share only the “ideal” sounds. Below is a segment from a recording I made in January 2022—after removing the noisy parts, only about 4 minutes of continuous natural soundscape remain.