Your Terra Station lives outside, listening 24/7 — and outside is not a quiet recording studio! If you're hearing wind gusts, distant traffic, or the general hum of daily life in your stream, that's completely normal. It doesn't mean anything is wrong with your Terra Station. Here's what to expect, and how placement can make your listening (and your bird IDs) better.

Why you hear wind

The Terra Station has two sensitive microphones in a stereo pair, tuned to pick up faint bird sounds. They are both covered by a built in wind screen, but microphones that sensitive will also pick up wind — and on gusty days, wind buffeting can temporarily overpower the mics. That's the nature of outdoor listening, not a defect.

The station adjusts its listening gain automatically and independently for each microphone (so a gust hitting one side doesn't take out both channels), but no outdoor microphone can make strong wind disappear entirely.

What matters for good listening: signal vs. background

The key idea is simple: what your Terra Station can identify depends on how loud the birds are compared to the background noise around them. A faint chip note next to a quiet hedge is easy; the same note next to a windy, road-facing corner gets buried. So the goal of placement isn't height or openness — it's getting close to the birds while keeping background noise down.

Placement tips for less wind and noise

• Get close to bird activity. Near feeders (but not directly under them — hungry birds are messy!), habitat edges, bushes and brush piles.
• Use your house or terrain as a sound block. Placing the Terra Station on the side of the house away from the road can block a surprising amount of traffic noise — and a building or hill breaks the wind, too.
• Think twice about mounting high. Height helps radio-tag range, but it also exposes the station to more wind and more road noise. Lower, close to cover, is often the better listening spot.
• Keep away from mechanical noise where you can: air conditioners, pool pumps, and fans make for less pleasant listening, and may decrease ID accuracy.

For more placement ideas, see Where are some good places to put my Terra?

When a sound ISN'T normal

Wind and ambient background are normal — but a few sounds are worth troubleshooting:

• Static or crackling: first try turning off Automatic Gain Control — in the app, tap your Terra Station, then Settings, and switch AGC off (no reboot needed). AGC can sometimes introduce static or cutting in and out. If true static persists with AGC off, contact us.
• A constant low electronic hum, like when a speaker is turned up too high that doesn't change with the weather: get in touch and let us know whether the ground near the station is wet — we'll help you track it down.

For anything that doesn't sound right, send us a message at support@terra.zohodesk.com — a short recording of the sound helps us diagnose it quickly.