If this is a slow news day, you could do worse than have a listen to a talk by Bernie Krause of Purdue University, who has been collecting soundscapes from the natural world for over 40 years. While his focus is on total soundscapes and what they mean rather than on individual sounds, his presentation also included some incredible individual sounds. A beaver distressed because the dam had been blown up and his family killed. An anemone that had missed out on a feed. I don’t recall hearing the sound, but do you know that trees make sounds? Not just the wind in the leaves but out of the pores of the bark.
The comments on the program on the Science Show site, included “wonderful” and “almost lifechanging” and “one of the most poignant reports I have heard”.
There were some downers. Krause has some 4000 recordings from about 1500 sites in 40 years work. About half of these sites are now silent. A Navy training jet flies over chorusing frogs. It takes the frogs 45 minutes to get back in sync again. Meanwhile he thinks individual frogs are easier targets for predators.
When he first collected recordings he needed 15 hours of field recording for an hour of archival material. Because of the intrusion of human sounds now he needs 2000.
Ironically, I listened to this on my pocket radio with button earphones under quality earmuffs to keep out the sound of a brushcutter. I was on a property where I had 50 acres to myself. I worked late, until literally the fireflies came out in numbers.
wonderful, and heartbreaking Brian. Thank you.
Bitte sehr, or as they say in English, no probs, Myriad74.
http://onesquareinch.org/
for a related project
Thanks for that marvellous link, Brian. One of the lovely things about spending some time on a boat was discovering how noisy crabs and fish can be -the hull seemed to amplify the sound a little. Toadfish make a thrumming sound not unlike a Tawny Frogmouth but punctuated with intermittent clunks. There are a bunch of recordings knocking around the net of natural radio sounds produced during aurorae and other electromagnetic events. They are pretty spectacular, great to listen to in the evenings.
Firefly season is wonderful and here is accompanied by the high pitched clicks and chirrups of the microbats coming out of the torpid season.
spot on brian, thanx muchly
I’m listening to it now. The beaver almost made me weep.
Thanks, Brian. That was great. It reminded me of a couple of projects I worked on a few years ago. One was a soundtrack for a play in the Riverland. We had permission to capture footage in Gerard, a local Aboriginal reserve. I had a very enjoyable few days wandering the banks of the Murray recording the sounds of the wildlife. Then we interviewed the elder of the community about the changes the region had gone through during his lifetime – and I had the inspiration (quite proud of this) of playing him the recorded sounds, and asking him what was missing compared to his childhood memories. Flocks of birds of all description flying up and down the river was the standout – that in the space of maybe 30-40 years. In the play, his interviewed speech was overlaid with the soundtrack from 2006, and what was missing.
I’m listening to it now. The beaver almost made me weep.
I admire your restraint. I had to explain to work colleagues what the problem was. Fortunately working in a Greens’ office everyone understood.
Thank you, Brian. I listened to the broadcast on Saturday and the poor beaver’s lament haunts me yet.
I’ve been banging on about this broadcast to anyone who’d listen since I first heard it.
The sad cries of a wounded, mourning beaver helps support my case for anthropomorphism. i.e, there should be more of it.
Here’s a thought. What must it have been like for those traumatised, starving Scottish crofters, carpenters, young pregnant women and their children, blacksmiths, bundled up and transported on John Dunmore Lang’s Bounty ships from the Isle of Skye to Port Jackson circa 1838 and sent to live and work in the wilds of the foothills of the NSW Barrington Tops: the weird sounds of the Australian bush, its birds, the treefrogs and possums, the roar of the rivers in flood, the sudden storms and lightning strikes, how mind blowing this utterly different soundscape must have been for them.