Just back from this year’s holiday to the beautiful Greek island of Corfu. This time we stayed on the North West coast, in a town called San Stefanos. On the Ionian Sea side of the island, the horizon is haunted by the silhouettes of the islands of Nisos Mathraki and Nisida Kravia, one inhabited but the other a protected bird sanctuary.
I couldn’t resist the night time magic and went out on a recording session to capture the sound of the night creatures. But I also went out on an early morning walk up into the Olive groves in the hillside.
The daytime sun certainly made any major exertion out of the question, so that gave an edge to my trip up into the hills. Was this a wise thing for a lone Englishman to do undertake with only a digital recorder and a box of Tic Tacs ?
This first recording is from my night trip down into a small grove of Olive trees facing the shore. I hadn’t planned for the enthusiastic reception I got from the local Mosquito community, which made prolonged recording impossible. I woke around 3am and left the apartment in my pyjamas (but with hat, of course) walked down from the coast road towards the sea into the grove of trees, and got this recording:
Agios Stefanos Coastal Olive Grove
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The bay is surrounded by hillsides, covered with Olive groves. This recording is from my early morning walk going away from the village, then up a series of dirt tracks into the hillside.
On my way, I came across a beehive lodged into a a tree by the side of the road. I didn’t say around too long, so there’s not much of this recording but the sound is pretty striking.
Roadside Bees
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29/08: I just contributed this last “Roadside Bees” recording to the interesting Sound Diaries project, run by Felicity Ford and Paul Whitty from the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. They have rolling themes for contributors, the current one being “Holiday Recordings”.
Walking along a stretch of the dirt track where this picture was taken.
Hillside
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These recordings were made with the OKI Soundman binaural microphones and an Edirol R09.
Probably my last individual Gene Pool post before I won’t be able to keep up!
