There is a large oak near our house, it grew from an acorn I planted when I was a kid. It’s autumn now and the oak attracts a lot of guests. Acorns are the favourite meal for Jays, we even gather them and put into bird’s feeder in winter. Sweet sap emitted by the oak’s leaves attracts Eurasian Hornets. They come every end of summer, fly around our house, sometimes get inside it, but have never bit anyone of us. They are slower than wasps and behave much more peacefully.
Yesterday evening one of the hornets entered our kitchen and started circling at the ceiling with a low steady buzzing. Spontaneously me and my daughter Olga decided to quickly record it. I had a Nevaton VR ambisonic mic rigged ready for another project, so I grabbed it and we were lucky to make some recordings of this perfect military aircraft. The hornet felt disoriented and rather nervous, it chaotically flew scratching the ceiling and lamps, sometimes rushing up and down. It’s amazing how a hornet lands: it hits an object, grips onto it and abruptly stops buzzing.
When in the end the disoriented hornet hit me in the forеhead, we decided that it’s enough and stopped our session. I caught him and brought out of the house. If they stay in the house for a night, they die of the lack of food and water.
Here’s the binaural version converted from the original A-format, using the RODE Soundfield and COMPASS Binaural plugins. Please use headphones for listening. The only pre-processing applied was a high-pass filter at 40 Hz.
If you want to listen to the Ambisonics original, here’s the link to the FOA AmbiX file converted from A-format using RODE Soundfield plugin:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q4o9ixd8xy258zr/Hornet%20AmbiX.wav?dl=0
How often do you encounter some interesting but scary objects to record and how eager you are to stop and pull out your mic?
