Wind Is the Original Radio

Hello and welcome back to Artist Talks! We have been longing for this return and are so happy to kick-start this new phase with David de la Haye, an award-winning ecological sound artist focusing on underwater aquatic environments. An uncanny and down-to-earth fun conversation about listening to underwater sounds and the fascinating experience of recording them, creation of music with others from his field recordings and some necessary gear talk. David is a musician - a bassist, composer and technician - which informs his work and collaborative processes with other musicians. He shares about how this processes go for some of his latest projects and the value of gathering people to make music. Learn more about David and his work on his website, https://daviddelahaye.co.uk/,and consider supporting him on bandcamp: https://daviddelahaye.bandcamp.com/.

Recorded in the misty montane rainforest of Gunung Halimun National Park, this recording features subtle birdsong and the sounds of a distant mountain river. This location is one of the last truly wild places on the island of Java and home to a host of unique wildlife. Recorded by Marc Anderson at the Gunung Halimun National Park, Java, Indonesia

A place dominated and overseen by large feathered creatures, acrobatic corvids and smaller virtuosos. Nearer the ground, the arched-formations of rock provide a refuge to others, from doves with their splashing wing beat sounds to mammals like red foxes, whose sounds are amplified and travel like an upwards spiral. This amplification serves as a delicacy to my ears, bringing closer to my perception many tiny movements, many of which are hair-raising. Maybe it's merely the darkness operating its dominating power over us or perhaps it's this intriguing dance between near-silence and the appearance of nocturnal creatures - both animals and rocks, for the latter feel alive on their own. The easily heard species in this recording are the tawny owl (Strix aluco) and the Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus). This is a specially quiet recording, so an equally quiet listening is recommended. Recorded by Melissa Pons in Spain.

The breeze bring some freshness in the evening during the hottest month of the year. This is the time when wildlife gets out of the hides to feed. Recorded by Sounding Wild in Outamba Kilimi NP, Sierra Leone

Taman Negara is a large area of protected rainforest on the heart of the Malaysian peninsula and home to an abundance of wildlife including tigers, leopards and elephants. This recording features the sounds of a myriad of insects calling from deep in the forest at night. Recorded by Marc Anderson in Taman Negara, Malasya

Spring in the Pacific Northwest is typically a damp rainy season. Snowmelt from the Cascade mountains and frequent cloud cover causes streams, and rivulets to pop up along mountainsides swelling the rivers in the valleys. This particular valley, like many in the western cascade range, has many small marshy areas surrounded by tall evergreen trees. By April the nights are filled with sounds of the Cascades Frog and a persistent white noise from nearby flowing water. Lengthening days, a dawn chorus starts early and quiets down as a rain shower approaches. This region of Washington is the ancestral lands of the Stillaguamish People. Recorded by Nick McMahan, Washington, USA

I have a tradition of recording for the week around Summer Solstice every year. The long days and extended twilights draw out the liveliest and most expressive Dawn Choruses of the season. This year I’m in Sinlahekin Valley in Washington State’s Okanogan High Country. It’s a deep, long scar on the ground gouged and left behind by retreating arms of the Cordilleran Ice Sheets of the last several glaciated ice ages. Arid steppes on one side, fir-covered mountains on the other, the Valley draws a line that separates two of the major ecological regions in our State. Running much of the length of the Valley is Sinlahekin Creek, a meandering, beaver-controlled system that sustains a narrow strip of wetlands and riparian borders favored by passing migratory birds. Deep enough to not sustain strong wind, the Valley is a valuable shelter, sometimes for passing birds to rest, sometimes to stay. One of those birds is the Yellow-breasted Chat, a laconic-yet-vociferous songbird with a voice both louder and deeper than belies its small size. One of the more enigmatic songbirds of North America, the Yellow-breasted Chat is widespread across the continent but rarely found in dense numbers. It skulks about in dense riparian thickets and other shrubby habitats, nesting deep within and singing from a barely-exposed perch. More often heard than seen in late Spring and early Summer, when males produce long soliloquies in search for a mate (or sometimes two), they have a brief but explosively creative burst of song every year, only to remain silent for the rest of it. Recorded on Summer Solstice, 2024, this particular singer was a surprise. I had been hiking around one of my favorite valley campgrounds, enjoying the recent explosion of late-Spring songbirds, when I noticed a thicket that was particularly favored by local Lazuli Buntings. Nice Bunting recordings being a goal of this trip, I quickly set up a lightweight hiking recorder with a pair of small mics to leave overnight in hopes that Buntings could have time to sing as they saw fit. Imagine my surprise when listening back to the recordings and found more than an hours’ worth of a Yellow-breasted Chat singing close by, as if I’d set these microphones up just for him! Our Chat wakes up early in Nautical Twilight with a burst of whistles to rattle the neighborhood. After a brief rest, he begins his soliloquy of repeated grunts, rattles, beeps, and whistles. Soon, less than a minute later, the first distant songs of the next Chat over can be heard in the background. They space themselves out along the riparian border of Sinlahekin Creek just close enough to still be heard, far enough away to give each other space. While most birds sleep in and wait for more light, including Robins and Blackbirds, Nautical Twilight is their moment to sing. For most of the next two hours this little bird will sing from the same perch, only occasionally shifting directions as if he wants to be sure everyone has an equal chance to hear his voice. His voice grows louder and softer as he turns toward or away from the microphones. He’s so close the early reflections off the leaves of the thicket scatter his voice back to us loud and clear even when he faces away. With almost mechanical precision he continues his steady chanting song. As other birds awaken with the slowly breaking mountain dawn, the air fills with songs loud and soft behind — but never interfering with — the Chat. Soon there are cawing Crows, Black-capped Chickadees sweetly calling, “Phoee-be”, and Lazuli Buntings working out their unique and recently “crystalized” songs. A Veery sounds like a mournful flute the next hedge over. A Ruffed Grouse beats its wings with an almost too-low-to-hear “flah-thump”. Yellow Warblers, Red-eyed Vireos, Common Yellowthroats, and Spotted Towhees circle the neighborhood, calling from one tree, singing from another, never satisfied, at least not until Sunrise when everyone will disperse to live out their day foraging for meals and nesting material. Filling out the soundscape are Cedar Waxwings, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Pied-billed Grebes, Pine Siskins, rowdy gangs of teenaged Red-winged Blackbirds, and more. After Sunrise the avian community slowly disperses. The Dawn Chorus is no more, replaced in whole by daily activities. Song continues as part of that organizing behavior, but the Dawn pronouncements are over after nearly 2 hours of upwelling joy. Our chat slowly moves farther and farther from his perch, allowing daring Buntings and Towhees the chance to take over the job of songmeister. If we were to keep listening throughout the day, we’d hear the Yellow Chat come and go, ensuring his perch and his home remain his and his alone. At night he will reverse the process, singing from Sunset to Astronomical Twilight, no so much fading away but just stopping when it’s time to fall asleep, to gain back some of that spent energy to do it all again tomorrow. Recorded by Andy Martin in Okanogan High Country, USA

Recorded in the Spring of 2022, this soundscape has all the indicators of a warm day: pollinators, a variety of crickets, occasional frogs and a rich multi-layered display of bird song. It's one of the quietest places I know, allowing an equally quiet observer to listen to all the layers and make up a sonorous composition of this place weaving it in one's imagination. These are the most prevalent bird species one can hear in this recording: Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix), Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus), Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupidae), Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra), Little Owl (Athene noctua). The Montado is an unique system, existing only in the Iberian Peninsula although slightly different from the Dehesa, in Spain. As far as we know, human intervention has started during the neolithic period, favouring certain trees for their high yielding fruits that feed the animals, and others for their cork. Despite such intricate connection and millennial relationship, the Montado is in decline; this system is incredibly fragile and faces a number of grave threats today, from diseases that affect trees and wild rabbits to overgrazing, to privatization of enormous areas of land for mono-crop exploitation, leaving the soil impoverished and triggering the increase of chemical use, which will then infiltrate underground. Thus it is imperative and urgent to take care of this emblematic land.

You can hear the tide slowly approaching in the distance, with activity from all sort of birds in this patch of green in one of the busiest islands of the Bijagos Archipelago. Recorded by Sounding Wild in the Bijagos Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau

Afternoon ambience from bushland in the New England tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. A light breeze blows through the canopy of the eucalyptus woodland and in the background, birdsong drifts on the cool mountain air. Recording by Marc Anderson at the Mummel Gulf National Park, NSW, Australia

High and dry. There is hardly anything here. No water, no trees, just a small two-track (dirt road where people have driven enough times to form a road, but the ground has never been graded), and a distant horizon. The terrain appears endlessly flat, but after some time walking, I cannot see my car anymore. No towns, people, highways, or aircraft. A strange silence seems to be suspended in the still air. I sit down in the sagebrush and the wind calms. Looking closer I see various small wildflowers growing in clumps, thoughtfully placed near roots and sage. I lay down. It doesn’t feel dirty here. The dusty soil is cool, almost soothing. Eyes close, it is not long before a whir of wings pass not far overhead. Quickly followed by another and a hushed chirp. Something imperceptible has shifted. There is another soft chirp. Another whir, over to the left. Then a trill. Gradually building, a mesmerizing chorus of Brewer’s sparrows and a steady drumbeat of a common poorwill in the distance weave the song of this quiet sage land. These sounds were recorded on the ancestral land of the Northern Paiute people. Exceptionally low-noise microphones in various arrays capture the delicate sounds of the environment. If you would like to know more please get in touch. Recorded in the Basque Hills, Oregon, USA by Nick McMahan

Recorded in December 2023 on my first — but not last — trip through Costa Rica, a troop of Golden Mantled Howler Monkeys in Costa Rica’s Parque Nacional Corcovado greets the dawn and their neighbors (and the rest of the jungle) the only way they know how. Male mantled howlers have an enlarged hyoid bone, a hollow amplifying bone near their vocal cords that gives the ability to generate great “howling” calls that can heard for kilometers. Howling allows the monkeys to exercise territory and remain in contact without expending energy through movement or bearing the risks of physical confrontation. As someone who likes little more than sitting in a forest listening to nature speak, I approve of this lazing behavior. While this howling is their most well-known vocal characteristic, I’m rather fond of the popping and grunting that warms up to the howl and pads the time in between. It’s relatively quiet, and is most noticeable only when near the vocalizing howler. You can hear it throughout their first round of howling the beginning. After speaking with other recordists, I know I am far from alone as someone who loves their sound, but I may be one of the few that enjoys waking up to their calls. Every morning I heard this nearby was a morning I walked to breakfast with a big silly grin on my face. Neotropic birds come and go throughout the recording, but one persistent voice was the Yellow-throated Toucan, with a rhythmic, bouncing song that seems to carry on forever. There is at least one singing for most of this recording, and later, after the this first hour, a pair begin a duet. Also coming and going are raucous and noisy Scarlet Macaws and Red-lored Parrots, a lone Red-eyed Tree Frog, a visiting Little Tinamou, and more. I’m out of my depth when it comes to identifying neotropical birds, so I’ll let rest of the ecosystem speak for itself. Recorded by Andy Martin at Parque Nacional Corcovado, Costa Rica

This segment of a dusk chorus in the summer-arid region of Vale do Côa, Portugal, is somewhat a reverse story from the dawn chorus recorded in the same period, although fading out much quicker into a windy night, when low whispering bursts take the place of the singing birds. In addition to the most audible and easily identifiable species, we can also hear the cuckoo here and there. Other species listed: Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus), Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio), Common BlackBird (Turdus Merula), Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), Common Wood Pigeon (Columba palumbus), Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix). Recorded by Melissa Pons, in Portugal

Dawn chorus from a rare pinsapo (Spanish fir) forest in the mountains of Andalucia. Starting softly at first light, the song of a Eurasian Robin is the first to herald the new day. As the day brightens the songs of many other species fill the air. In the background the soft tinkling of bells can be heard from goats on a distant hillside. Recorded by Marc Anderson at Parque Nacional Sierra de las Nieves, Spain

Recoding by Seán Ronayne, in Zarnesti, Romania

A coveted silence drenches the deep valley. Winter at it’s finest. With closed eyes, I discern the distant white noise of a creek flowing beneath the snow. Alongside one of the small lakes, a coyote crosses the ice on the opposite shore, noticing my presence as well. As early dusk descends, a small flock of Canadian geese flies overhead, their honking resonating against the steep valley walls—a common sight during this season. The geese are nearing a lake that has a unique nearly musical echo emanating from it. The chatter of trumpeter swans who have made this pond home for the winter. Evening light fades and the swans move to various nearby water sources that have not frozen, greeting each other with loud echoing calls. Moments of silence are equally piercing in this winter valley. Recorded by Nick McMahan in the Washington River

A classic quiet Savannah dawn chorus from this part of the world. Recording by Sounding Wild at the Outamba-Kilimi National Park, Sierra Leone

Growing up in the mid-Atlantic states of the US and with roots and time lived in the Deep South, few sounds bring me to a state of transcendence like the orchestrated song of insects at night. The spectrally tight but densely-layered score of hundreds or thousands of insects pulsing, ratcheting, trilling, buzzing, and singing in concert is soothing my the ears and the best sleep-aid I can experience for myself. There’s so much life in a chorus, and it’s not only insects. Frogs occasionally beep. Bats flutter by. The occasional leaf drops from the canopy. This is my happy place. Recorded on the last night of a stay in a private lodge on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, near Parque Nacional Corcovado. Recording by Andy Martin at the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

Recently we visited a beautiful paradise in the Eastern Arc Forests of Tanzania—the Amani Nature Forest Reserve. This reserve protects the unique, biologically important sub-montane forest ecosystem of Tanzania’s East Usambara Mountains. Home to unique and endemic biodiversity, the reserve contains stunning flora, fauna, and trails to explore.   Our guide suggested visiting the lesser-traveled Kiganga trail. True to his word, as soon as we left the small town adjacent to the forest, we were greeted by the quiet tranquility of the forest. The only sounds were the distant sound of Zigi River flowing through the forest and the high-pitched calls of cicadas in the canopy above. We stopped to listen for a while before choosing a tree to set up the recorder. At dusk, the loud cicadas gave way to the more nocturnal animals—crickets, bats, and hyraxes. The hyrax’s call occasionally rose above the crickets, echoing through the forest all night!  Field recording by Martha Mutiso in Tanzania

A breezy afternoon in the lowland rainforest of Sabah, Borneo. Although the birdsong is more sparse than earlier in the day, many birds are active and can be heard calling and moving about in the the surrounding forest. Recorded by Marc Anderson