Recently I had the pleasure to spend several days recording on the wonderfully-named Skull and Crossbones Ridge in the Loomis Natural Resources Conservation Area in Okanogan County. The ridge marks a fascinating intermix of three dominant habitats in the NRCA: subalpine wet meadow, mountain sagebrush scrub, and forest consisting of Lodgepole Pine, Subalpine Fir, and Alpine Larch.
Due to an approaching ridge of low pressure, it was fairly windy all day, every day, but there were a few distinct moments of still air. Surprisingly, and delightfully, one of those moments was across the Dawn (First Light to Sunrise) period. Because I haven't shared a long recording recently, the first track in this playlist is a "Long Dawn". Being just after Summer Solstice, First Light was at 0409 on this day, 2021 June 25. The recording itself begins in near-silence at 0341, with the first local bird voice coming from an awakening American Robin about 15s in. Most of the nearby nesters have dispersed well-before sunrise at 0457, but the mountain winds were beginning their return. I let the recording continuer nearly another half-hour until 0526 to hear the onrush of cooler mountain flowing across the ridge.
Some of the many voices you'll hear in this recording are American Robins, Chipping Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, Brewer's Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Washington Ground Squirrels, Clark's Nutcrakers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Swainson's Thrushes, a Western Wood Pewee, possibly a Vesper Sparrow, and also quite possibly me coughing from a distance of around 250 feet (76m) because I just can't keep myself quiet.
On an enjoyment note, because we're currently undergoing an historic once-in-a-thousand-years heatwave here in Seattle I was forced to lightly master these recordings on headphones whilst fans blast me from all angles in my little studio room. I'm not suggesting that you should *only* listen to them on headphones, but they'll likely translate best that way. My mastering doesn't involve a whole lot of processing, mostly just some low-end control when it's extra-windy and critical choices about how to decode from double mid-side (my preferred recording method) to stereo for SoundCloud playback, but it's enough that listening on a nice set of headphones will give you a closer approximation of what I heard when I clicked "upload".
As always, if you like something you hear and would like to license it or something similar for use or simply download it for further listening enjoyment, feel free to reach out to me by direct messaging here on SoundCloud or clicking one of my far-too-many social media connections above.
Happy listening!
