This was recorded on a cool spring afternoon at the Sacramento River Bend Area in Tehama County, California. The area is administered by the Bureau of Land Management and is located along a large bend of the Sacramento River in the Sacramento Valley, which is the portion of the Central Valley of California that lies north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
It was my first time visiting the area, and I was hopeful that it would be a good place for sound recording. Though I did bring my recording gear, this visit was really a scouting trip to check out the area and hopefully find some good places to record in the future. It's a beautiful landscape of rolling hills covered in blue oak savannah, with lush riparian habitat along the river and creeks. With the abundance of precipitation we have received this winter, the area was saturated and every possible feature of the landscape that could carry water was doing so. Birds were singing, water was flowing, wildflowers were blooming, fresh green grass was growing, and the oak trees were just beginning to leaf out; it was an absolutely beautiful spring day.
There was an unfortunate amount of air traffic and other noise pollution, but I did manage to get this recording of Western Meadowlarks, Mourning Doves, and other birds in the oak savannah during the afternoon. I look forward to returning soon and trying to capture a dawn chorus, the sound of the river, and the sounds of the many seasonal streams.
Full disclosure- I did have to use a pretty aggressive high pass filter on this recording to remove low frequency noise pollution. Though this was recorded during a short break between passing aircraft, there was still too much noise pollution to make for a pleasant listen, and the filter didn't affect the subject of this recording, which is the birds, so I thought it would be okay. I hope you don't mind.

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