Field Notes - 23rd January 2020 - Osea (not Island) 8am

Stuart Bowditch · Osea (not Island) - 23rd January 2020

Like recent mood, influenced by the time of year, lack of light and a recent car crash, the tide was very low. Like also the arable land here, lower than the river and salt marsh. If it wasn't for a thin and vulnerable barrier of protection we would be inundated. The warning calls sound out but still I walk on through the mist and mud. Others retreat to relative safety. The sun has risen but I can not see it or feel it. Any light is diffused to a saturation of grey, becoming darker as mist becomes drizzle.
 
A forty minute walk along the sea wall and I reach a place, indicated on Baker's map C3 by two circles in ink. There are no clues as to what these indicate but I have just started to read Hetty Saunders' My House of Sky: The life and work of JA Baker. which may shed some light on his marks. I'm taking them quite literally as a marker in the landscape so I set up, choosing a bare bramble as a pathetic attempt to remain covert.

It's so quiet today. A rare moment of peacefulness, among the recent cacophony of life. A retreat from the quotidian, in to the self. Looking inward today is fine as visibility is poor. Listening becomes the focus and I resist the urge to spot. The drizzle turns to rain and my notes become fuzzy and washed out. I put the notebook away and just sit. Listen. Think.
 
My visual identification skills of bird spotting have become better over the past couple of months but my audible skills need a lot more work. Listening in the studio to the recordings has been revealing and using a spectrogram (see above image made with Izotope RX7 software) to identify bird calls visually has been a great help. Looking for certain shapes within the 1 hour recordings has enabled me to track down bird calls quickly. Most midrange bird calls I have been able to hear but some with higher frequencies have eluded me in the studio, so have certainly missed some in the field. My own listening limitations have certainly be highlighted and I'll have to make some adjustments to the perceptions, and abilities, of myself as a listener. There will be a point in the future where, inevitably, microphones will become my ears.
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Over the past ten years my mum Terri Bowditch has been gradually losing her hearing. It was a slow and natural decline but one that becomes frustrating and isolating. Eventually, after having a lot of tests she had a cochlear implant which involved surgery and new hearing aids. It is working extremely well and she has learned to hear again, which has been very liberating for her.
 
I have realised over the past few years that the work I have been doing has become a vehicle to being, in whatever form that being takes, in the landscape. Living, Listening, Engaging. The act of doing and the freedom to be able to, are becoming more important than the reason for doing itself. And certainly more important than any documentation or work produced after the act. To the self those are ways of remembering what one has done, or an aid to processing the information to understand the experience further. Also, importantly, these serve as a way of connecting with others in both the short and long term. By making audio recordings, and sharing or reaching out, a part of now is preserved for the future which could have a much greater value in times to come.
 
As I walked east, back along the sea wall, the mist thins out a little bit to allow some light from the sun to brighten the grey. The now incoming tide provided a perfect mirror image of the mist and birds flying above it. I found myself in a sudden moment of light, clarity and beauty and stood still for a few minutes to imprint it on my memory.
 
I later find out that the word covert is a collective noun for coots, which feature as the most dominant birds in this recording.