Closer to home I have made many trips within Ireland. A lot of the journeys were early morning trips to the local woods or fields near the sea, anywhere that had good sounds to record. In nature there is something to record at almost any time of year. Although August is the quietest time when most birds fall silent, that is when the grasshoppers can be heard. Then there is streams, wind, the sea and other sounds. A mid winter bird chorus although it is not anything as good as during the spring peak, it still has a beautiful quality that perfectly reflects that time of year. I can say that I am more interested in birdsong than when I first begun over 23 years ago. I made two albums of the sounds of the great Saltee Island. I have been to Killarney National Park, the Shannon Callows, Kilcoole, Broadlough, the Devils Glen, Glendalough, Glenveagh National Park, The Wexford Slobs and lots of local places near my home to record. I would now consider quarter-inch tape to be an inferior way to record sound, however there is a certain fun in copying these recordings to computer, then in an editing program, pull out some of the hiss and distant rumbles and cutting out imperfections and getting balance and levels fully correct. I know that a lot of this applies to any recording format digital or analogue, however there is a lot more imperfections on analogue compared to Digital. The way to test any audio system is to record birds. There is also a satisfaction in hearing old analogue recordings after they have been cleaned up and presented on CD in an orderly way, completely absent of bumpy starts and ends, without the poorer parts and other imperfections. Recording wildlife combines an aspect of sport as well as the technical with the aspect of a game of chance. There is the bit of the hunt about it, then later you have the fun of processing the recordings, I think you get more out of the sounds if you examine them by processing them. One is always learning new things and learning new species by sound, sometimes there is the delight in finding that you have recorded a species you have not recorded before. this is done by listening to commercially available recordings and comparing them with a new recording just made.
I have been to Wales to record. On my first visit I recorded not only birds, but also narrow gauge trains, some of them steam trains. There are a lot more species of birds to be found in Wales, compared to Ireland. On my second visit I got no birds,however I made some fine recordings of a steam train journey, to devils bridge from Aberystwyth.
There has been a lot of fun too in recording people reminiscing about the 'old days.' I have also had a lot of happy days on work camps where I made many recordings, it is surprising how many different sounds you can get, indeed I have made a cd of sounds made on work camps in Killarney.