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Wildlife Sounds & Their Recording, E. Simms: Hardback: 1st Edition
Wildlife Sounds & Their Recording, E. Simms: Hardback: 1st Edition
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Wildlife Sounds & Their Recording
By Eric Simms.
Published by Paul Elek Ltd, London, 1979. First edition. Hardback cover with dust jacket (unclipped), 143 pages. Black & white photography and illustration throughout.
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The earliest existing recording of a wildlife sound was made as long ago as 1889 by Ludwig Koch. In this book, Eric Simms, well-known naturalist and broadcaster and Koch's successor at the BBC, reviews the history of sound recording from the early wax cylinders to present-day quadrophonic methods. As a result of improved techniques, the sounds of nature can now be more faithfully recorded for posterity and for enjoyment and research.
Grey seals in the Farne Islands; flamingos, frogs and owls in the Camargue; stone curlews in Suffolk; howler monkeys in South America: these are among the many sounds and recordings described. What do the various calls mean? The chaffinch, for example, has no less than sixteen different calls denoting a range of messages from alarm and injury to courtship, recognition, and even pleasure. In one of his most delightful passages, Eric Simms recounts the four years he spent recording badgers in the wild, a study which revealed for the first time the full vocabulary of this shy nocturnal animal.
Eric Simms does not minimize the difficulties that beset the sound recordist, but explains the techniques by which it is now possible to capture bird calls on a mountain top and even to record the ultrasonic cries of bats. A patient disposition can also be an advantage, especially during a long cold night contending with rain, wind, barking dogs, striking clocks, the noise of trains, and only one recording lasting 2 bare second to show for it! But on other occasions the excitement of hearing and recording the cheep of an unborn chick or the fluctuating songs of migrating whales makes all the preparation and problems wonderfully worthwhile.
(Bindery;B1)
