Wind passing through a pine and various sparse shrubs and grasses on a steep slope then subsiding as thunder builds over the area.  There are some various critters and birds rustling around in the background. Recorded with my Sennheiser double mid-side system.

Grasshoppers Wind and Thunder

The Red Deer Rut (Brame du Cerf) recorded in the heart of the  the Orleans Forest, the largest Forest in France. 

Zoom F3 + 2 x Sennheiser MKH8020s
23.09.2023

Red Deer Rut - Forêt d'Orleans, France

Roosevelt Elk (aka Rainforest Elk or Olympic Elk) bulls challenging for social dominance hours after sunset in late September 2023.

Elk live in a fairly well-defined, yet fluid, social hierarchy. Only the biggest or strongest bulls earn the right to mate, so the competition during the female's estrus season is intense. Bulls earn their harem by exerting dominance over other bulls in their territory, either by driving them off or just scaring them off. When a challenger thinks they have what it takes to become the dominant bull they stray into that bull's territory and issue their challenge. If accepted (and it always is), what results is a fierce clash of massive bodies and sharp antlers pushing and shoving until one bull gives in. The battle leaves scars on the ground in the form of huge gashes where antlers and cloven hooves gouged the field and shattered tree branches were flung in the fury.

Recorded in the Quinalt Rainforest River Valley, there's an unavoidable distant wash of river in the background. In addition, there had been a heavy rain event just days before. The river was rushing fairly hard as a result, so the below recording is very lightly processed to reduce the influence of that noise. The unprocessed source immediately follows if you want to hear the difference.

I record elk by leaving recorders out in the field where herds are known to migrate. Occasionally I'm able to follow a herd and record more direct, but I do not want to alarm the herd or stress them unnecessarily, so I try to avoid this method.

Bugles are multi-toned calls that start low and transition into a scream. During the rut season, Bulls use this to express dominance over other males, warding off potential rivals, and attract potential mates. Outside of the rut they will often bugle when leading a herd.

Chuckles, or laughs, sound just like that, a series of short loud grunts. Like bugles, chuckles are used as a form of dominance and attraction call. You'll often hear them used when a bull is specifically calling his harem to gather. They produce chuckles on their own, or sometimes tag them onto the end of a bugle.

image: A magnificent and iconic Big Leaf Maple, taken the following day narthex scene of the battle.

Listen to more bugling and chuckling from this trip in the full playlist here: https://on.soundcloud.com/exa6D

Listen to an early morning soundscape in the nearby Queets Rainforest with a resident herd of Roosevelt Elk wandering through on their daily route here:
https://on.soundcloud.com/sJFsX

Roosevelt Elk Bull challenge with big clashing fight

Recorded at: Palm Valley, Finke Gorge National Park, NT
Date/time: 20 August 1990, 8am
Environment: Desert, rock outcrops, freshwater pools
Description: A lone male dingo began calling near my camp.  Birds in the background include Horsfield Bronze-Cuckoo, Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, Singing Honeyeater, Brown Honeyeater, Galah, dotterel, Crested Bellbird, Grey Shrike-thrush

NFSA title No. 1221379
Track No. 22

These sounds were gathered by Vicki Powys during a three month recording and painting expedition to Northern Australia in the winter of 1990. This collection includes highlights such as the shrieks of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo soaring overhead and the close calls of a lone Dingo which - at the time - was identified by internationally respected wildlife communities both in Australia and abroad, as the only known recording of such.

"I had recently bought a small four-wheel-drive car and a tent and had set off with a twofold purpose - to explore the landscape for painting and to record wildlife sounds. The sounds would later evoke the places every bit as much as my sketches and photographs. My recording gear was fairly basic, using a compact cassette (Sony WMD6C), with two ‘tie-pin’ microphones in a quasi-binaural setup for stereo sounds. Despite the limitations of the equipment, the sounds are still very evocative for me, of those times and places. The dingo that I recorded at Palm Valley (Finke Gorge National Park, Northern Territory) was later hailed by the British Library of Wildlife Sounds as ‘the only known recording of a lone dingo howling, in the wild’." Vicki Powys, 2014.

Information on the database of Vicki Powys' wildlife recording work (to-date)is available via the NFSA website at
www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/search-collection

General Note: Vicki Powys has been recording and writing about bird song since the 1980's. Her recording expertise includes developing stereo configurations specifically for wildlife recording based on the SASS (Stereo Ambient Sampling System) design. Vicki is also a key member of the AWSRG (Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group).

You can find out more about her at
www.caperteebirder.com

Vicki Powys - Dingo

In nature's dance, a timeless rhyme,
No wars conceived, no famine's grime.
Mother Nature weaves a gentle song,
Where harmony reigns, and peace belongs.

Animals roam in instinct's grace,
No destructive footprints to erase.
They coexist, a balanced chore,
Unlike the chaos mankind may implore.

A symphony of life in every tree,
No battles fought for territory.
The rivers flow with a tranquil ease,
A stark contrast to man's unease.

Man, with the power to create,
Yet often wields it with darker fate.
In nature's arms, a lesson found,
To nurture, not destroy, on sacred ground.

So let us learn from nature's lore,
Embrace the love that life implores.
In the tapestry of Earth's grand art,
Find the peace that lies in every heart

https://www.facebook.com/thelisteningplanet/

Man Verus Nature

The sounds of a new day in the African bush. This album was recorded in Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana and features the diverse sounds of birds and wildlife in an ecotone of mopane woodland and arid savanna.

Botswana: Dawn in Tuli Wilderness

Botswana: Dawn in Tuli Wilderness - Album Sample

Let’s take a trip. We’re going to start in southwestern Europe and drive as far as we can go into the Arctic, following the annual migration of north-bound birds, photographing and recording them along the way. Then, we’ll turn our vehicles around, this time starting in southwestern Europe and following those same birds as far south as we can go, across the Strait of Gibraltar into Morocco and driving south along the west coast of Africa, all the way to Capetown, a distance of 12,000 kilometers. 

Sounds kind of daunting, doesn’t it? Perhaps; but that’s precisely the trip that Ario and Axel Drioli have undertaken. Axel is a wildlife sound recordist; his brother, Ario, is a photographer and cinematographer. I caught up with them and asked them to introduce themselves and tell us about themselves and their trip.

Episode 225: Wings Across Continents with Axel And Ario Drioli

CAMP 2019 - Red Deer Rutting Season - Chris Watson course. Tawny Owl in light rainfall.

Tawny Owl In Light Rainfall. Aulus-les-Bains, France, 2019.

Cold nights and warmer sunny days causes stress on thick lake ice. As the ice freezes and melts on a daily basis, periodic cracking and pinging sounds can be heard, sometimes quite dramatically. This track is edited from an all night recording made at a lake in south Estonia, a "greatest cracks" if you will, from more than 6 hours of material.

Cracking Lake Ice

Frogs in the first weeks of activity of the year. It was the warmest night so far, unusually high and although I went to the lake's edge, they were so loud that they could be heard from a long distance. This is also a place to see and hear herons and sometime storks, but this night it was all for the frogs.
I was testing out a Zoom F3 for the second time.

Frogs in the Countryside

I had the misfortune to set my camp near a pasture of unhappy cows.  They came in just after dark, and were moaning and hollering all night until the cowboys moved them just after daybreak.  But the crickets and owls (Great Horned, Elf, and Western Screech) created a lovely night chorus.  Recorded at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, south of Tucson, Arizona, on May 19, 2016.

Crickets, owls, and cows

Nature recordings, primarily from the western United States.  For the stories behind my recordings, visit my blog: www.wildmountainechoes.com.

Crickets, owls, and cows

Wild Mountain Echoes

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