Last time I presented you with some Dominican Republic ambience. Now it’s the time for the birds to speak. The last time I saw an egret in the wild was in Manitoba, a few years ago. Getting close to them was near impossible. Their eyesight seems much better than mine. They usually were on their way out before I even spotted them.
A little while ago, I went on a small one-week vacation (don’t we all like that to be months, not weeks?) to the Dominican Republic.
While there, I heard from the balcony of my room a racket like none other. And there were Cattle Egrets. Hundreds of them, all squabbling about something or something else.
So my first reaction was to grab my camera, fire off a few shots before they spotted me. Then I tried to get closer. It turned out they were nesting in a nearby mangrove, along with plenty of other birds and even iguanas. They didn’t even care about me. Lucky me.
A real paradise. But just when I came close enough to get decent shots even with my cellphone, the noise became somewhat unbearable. It turned out to be also a place with patios, restaurants and music. And the Dominicans like it loud.
I came back there the next morning around 6AM and recorded the following clip.
The only thing removed is the noise of a nearby Airconditioning plant, an industrial sized airco for the resort I was staying in. It’s still audible, but I have removed a lot of it by using Noise Reduction after recording just the unit by itself. Otherwise the sound is as it was. It’s amazing how the human ear can eliminate this noise, while a Zoom F3 and two Rode M5s cannot…
Enjoy the birds!
Until next time…