The Birdy Bug Pod
Podcasting with my boy...
So back at end of August 2022, I started a podcast with my son, something we had been casually talking about for sometime.
When I say talking about, what I really mean is that whenever we got together over a nice cup of strong black coffee, we found ourselves chatting passionately about photography, camera gear, wildlife, nature, conservation and the environment. 'We should do a podcast ha ha' is always how those conversations would end and then we'd go our separate ways and get distracted, as always, by day to day life.
In May 2022, I embraced an initiative encouraged by Plantlife, a British conservation charity working nationally and internationally to save threatened wild flowers, plants and fungi. The call was to let your garden go wild for a month, allowing wildflowers to come through in your lawn and encouraging insects, birds and wildlife into the garden. I did this and if you want to find out how that went there is a blog post on here all about it.
The reason I mention this is, the success of leaving my garden to go wild not only prompted me to leave it do so for the whole of 2022 but it also finally kickstarted us into making the podcast a reality. We found ourselves chatting a lot, not only about my 'wild' garden but also about the grass verges that had been left uncut by the councils to also support the initiative. It was fantastic when driving around locally to see wildflowers springing up on the roadsides and when going further afield along the motorways and dual carriage ways.
'That would make a great first podcast episode, we heard ourselves say, more than once. Let's do it, we also said, more than twice. And so we did and it's been an absolute joy. It's exceeded all expectations because I have to be honest when it came round to recording that first episode, I was really nervous about it. How would it sound? How would I sound? No one likes the sound of their own voice. Can we actually record anything that would sound vaguely interesting and engaging?
To be fair to us, we set off with the mindset that we would do it just for us, so it didn't really matter whether anyone listened to it or not. It was just great fun to do. We were really just chatting as we normally do, but this time in front of a mic.
Our first episode was 'Rewilding your garden', recorded into a single Blue Yeti USB microphone going straight into my MacBook Pro and we had so much fun doing it. After a little editing and saving it down to the right file format, we uploaded it to a podcast platform we had subscribed to and then sat back and grinned from ear to ear.
We had actually produced something and even though we said so ourselves, it sounded pretty damn good. Whether anyone else listened to it honestly didn't matter, it would be great if they did of course, but that wasn't the point. The point was that we had done this together, a father and son thing that was just hugely enjoyable.
Once that first episode was up, we were hooked. We made a plan to put an episode out every two weeks and have now just finished and uploaded our 43rd episode! We have covered all sorts of topics, from species specific subjects like curlews, water voles, oak trees and adders, to the environmental effects of producing tea and coffee or using peat.
Along the way and with every episode we have relaxed into it more and more. Even though we always want it to sound like we are just chatting about a subject, we do have a structure, a method to how we present each episode and it works. Doing the research for each one is so enjoyable and we've learnt so much we didn't know about the subjects we have covered.
We also very quickly, went from recording into a single USB microphone to investing in a more professional audio recording set up. I don't mean we spent a ton of money, but we did put together a great little set up that gave us much more control over the sound quality and it really was money well spent. I intend to do a follow up to this showing exactly what we use to record our podcasts.
It is a project we are immensely proud of and we look always look forward to recording the next episode. You can find all the recordings here on the website or listen to them on Spotify, Amazon, Apple and most of the major podcast platforms.
Oh and if you've ever thought of recording a podcast yourself then honestly, just do it. Once you've done the first one, I guarantee you'll be hooked.
Thanks... I really appreciate you dropping in. If you don't already, you can follow my instagram page where I add the odd funny caption if the image lends itself to one, hopefully provoking a smile or two. If you want to comment or get in touch to share bird related images and stories then I'd be delighted to hear from you.
IG - @a.bird.in.the.lens
E: steve@abirdinthelens.com
