Name: The peculiar Great Snipe lek by Bo Söderström in Lekking birds
Duration: 13 min 57 s
Description: From around 11 PM to 2 AM around ten Great Snipes gathered together on a mountain meadow with seepage water for their lekking activities. Some of the males displayed less than 2 m away from me - they had only eyes for their competitors! Mostly non-violent but I saw a couple of real fights between two males. The "song" is odd to say the least... Bergs municipality, June 11, 2023.

Lekking birds

Capercaillie, Common Crane and Black Grouse

Capercaillie lek

Black Grouse and Raven

Black Grouse and Common Crane

Black Grouse lekking

From around 11 PM to 2 AM around ten Great Snipes gathered together on a mountain meadow with seepage water for their lekking activities. Some of the males displayed less than 2 m away from me - they had only eyes for their competitors! Mostly non-violent but I saw a couple of real fights between two males. The "song" is odd to say the least... Bergs municipality, June 11, 2023.

The peculiar Great Snipe lek

Two generations discuss what it’s like to be a teenager in 2025 vs the 80’s

Mind The Gap

La Jolla, San Diego

Potok Waterstream medium MKH8020 MKH40 in mix

Potok Mono MKH40 in Mkh8020 stereo Waterstream medium

A field recording using leaf audio contact microphone + field amp, listening in on the secret life beneath the Poplar Tree. Poland 2025 (Owl Mountains) 

Life Beneath the Poplar

A sound of insects beneath a Poplar Tree, some stridulation and sound of distant crickets also picked up by the mic. 

A peaceful, meditative natural soundscape: the gentle wind through coastal forest; the deep roar of the Southern Ocean a mile away; and, immersed within the matrix of these elemental forces, a dispersed, quiet, but alive and recovering, early summer dawn - announced quite emphatically at the beginning of this recording by a nearby Red Wattlebird. (The Red Wattlebird's early 'wake up' calls are the only louder passage in this entire piece. It's a Red Wattlebird subspecies (Anthochaera carunculata clelandi) that is found only on Kangaroo Island.)

Recommended listening: Good quality headphones with a flat frequency response (preferably open-backed); or good quality stereo monitors. Relaxed deep meditative listening at a quiet time with minimal interference from extraneous noise. 

A note on the track image: The panorama photograph was taken from the middle of Snake Lagoon, facing the eastern forest margin of the lagoon. The recording was made from within the forest itself. At the time the photograph was taken, on 5th December 2024, Snake Lagoon, like most of the inland lagoons of Kangaroo Island, was dry, although its fertile soil floor was nevertheless green with flora, richly fertilised by the droppings of Kangaroo Island Kangaroos and Tammar Wallabies feeding on that same flora. Its dryness was due to a protracted period of unseasonal drought, a drought that was a major contributing cause to the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020. Those bushfires also raged through the coastal forests surrounding Snake Lagoon, which are seen, here, in this photograph, four years after the bushfires.

Related track: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20241205-wind-and-red-wattlebird-snake-lagoon-early-summer. (An excerpt from the first part of this longer recording, featuring the dawn calls of the Red Wattlebird.)

2024.12.05 A Windswept Early Summer Dawn at Snake Lagoon, Kangaroo Island.

Dawn chorus on the wetland. You can hear these species on the recording: great reed warbler (primarily), common cuckoo and mute swan
Date: 8. 6. 2025
Time: 4.05 - 5.30 am
Weather conditions: temperature 16°C, wind: 2m/s, partly cloudy
Place: Vranovice, South Moravia
Equipment: Telinga parabolic dish

Great reed warbler - dawn chorus on the wetland

COMMON SANDPIPER (Actitis hypoleucos)
SONG IN DISPLAY FLIGHT

This sound-portrait of a Common Sandpiper on its breeding grounds reveals the insistent and highly rhythmic "sewing-machine" song, given  as the bird circles around the loch side just after midnight on the 6th June 1997.  At times, insects drone close against the windcage.

The atmospheric roar of distant breakers on the Uig Saltmarsh can be heard in the background, along with "bleats" from Snipe, and faint calls from Ringed Plover and Greenshank.

The title of the piece is the Gaelic name for this species, meaning literally "Fidler-Bird by the Loch".

Uig Saltmarsh, Timsgarry, Uig Penninsula, Isle of Lewis.

Captured with  a Sony MZ-R3 Portable MiniDisc Recorder, using a pair of Sennheiser K6ME66 short-gun electrets.   Note that this is my only Soundcloud item in which I have used electret microphones and a non-linear recorder

Fidhleirbord - An - Locha - Common Sandpiper

Field sound recordist and archivist of vanishing sounds in natural Iandscapes. Highly commended in the Sound of the Year Awards 2024 - Best Natural Sound.

The peculiar Great Snipe lek

Bo Söderström

Related tracks