Dropped two contact mics at the surface of an anthill

Recorded with JrF contact mics in Serrinha do Alambari, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil in Sound devices Mixpre-6 96kHz 24 bits

Ants swarming

It's dawn on a very still Lake Öjesjön in mid April. Just a few days earlier the lake was completely frozen, but in the past few days Spring has well and truly come alive. In this recording we hear Canada and Grey Lag Geese, Common Cranes, Goldeneye and other wetland birds on the lake. From the trees on the shore of the lake we hear a Redwing accompanied by other woodland birds. From time to time we hear Black Grouse displaying in the distance. 

Sound Devices Mix Pre 6 ii + 2 x Sennheiser MKH 8040s (ORTF)
15.04.2023

Dawn At Öjesjön Lake - Västmanland, Sweden

On a bright and sunny mid-March day, the pond is warming up with sounds.
This is my most detailed recording of Corixa punctata (aka Lesser water boatman) to date.

Can the Lesser and Greater families be told apart through sound alone? Please let me know. What seems clear is that it is possible to discern between some lesser varieties, as demonstrated by Marco Presente in this recording:
https://soundcloud.com/marco-pesente/micronecta-sp-lesser-water

**The sounds get really loud and right at the peak of the Fletcher-Munson curve so please take care of your ears**

Species: Lesser Water Boatman (Corixa punctata)
Location: Middle Spernal, Warwickshire, UK
Date and time: 19 March 2025, 13h30
Habitat: Freshwater pond, wetland

Gear
Aquarian Audio A5s, Zoom F3

Water Boatmen

An asylum of loons wail, yodel, and tremolo around midnight communicating across Dore Lake in remote Saskatchewan, Canada, all the while being accompanied by trilling boreal chorus frogs. Yes those are official names for different loon vocalization, and an asylum is a thing too, really. Two clips recorded about a half hour apart are cross faded together at 3:14. Recorded May 2025 with Sony PCM-M10 & pair Clippy EM272 0mnidirectinal  microphones in A - B attached to opposite sides of tree trunk a few yard from lake shore.

Asylum of Loons

I was in Soomaa National park in 2012. In 2013 I was there again and recorded some good material but as it was endlessly overflown by jets I had to give up on that location for recording.  For other trips to Estonia I went instead to the Alam Pedja reserve, this has been really good and productive.  When planning my 2025 trip I heard that the torrent of jets was no longer roaring over Soomaa, so I knew it was time to return. 
The weather was not as settled for the first few days, however it calmed down enough to capture these beautiful recordings of the Skylarks.  Even though the flat open grassy area was huge, the three and sometimes four Skylarks performed in only a small part of it, this was a good thing as the birds being near each other seemed to make them sing all the better.  Usually I record in forested or woodland habitats, however when I heard these birds, I decided to devote the rest of my stay to recording the Skylarks.  I used three recording rigs placed about 30 meters apart, and left them out from about 3am to about 5am (A Tascam DR100-Mk3 with the Rode NT4 with the Omni capsules, a Tascam X8 recorder with a pair of Lewitt 440's cardioid and finally a Sound devices MixPre3 recorder and a pair of Omni directional MKH8020's).  On my last morning there, only two birds were in song and even they seemed to be loosing interest in singing and had moved away somewhat from where they had been singing so well in the previous days.  Sometimes Lapwings could be heard in that same place, these can be heard best in the opening recording.  In my 42 years of recording I have only recorded Skylarks twice, but never as well as in this production.  It is very difficult to find somewhere quiet enough to get really clean recordings.  Finally, I stayed in Soomaa Puhkeküla (Soomaa Holiday Village) this is right inside the park and almost directly opposite the field where I made these recordings.

Skylark Heaven (track 5) - Free download

I was in Soomaa National park in 2012. In 2013 I was there again and recorded some good material but as it was endlessly overflown by jets I had to give up on that location for recording.  For other trips to Estonia I went instead to the Alam Pedja reserve, this has been really good and productive.  When planning my 2025 trip I heard that the torrent of jets was no longer roaring over Soomaa, so I knew it was time to return there. 
The weather was not as settled for the first few days, however it calmed down enough to capture these beautiful recordings of the Skylarks.  Even though the flat open grassy area was huge, the three and sometimes four Skylarks performed in only a small part of it, this was a good thing as the birds being near each other seemed to make them sing all the better.  Usually I record in forested or woodland habitats, however when I heard these birds, I decided to devote the rest of my stay to recording the Skylarks.  I used three recording rigs placed about 30 meters apart, and left them out from about 3am to about 5am (A Tascam DR100-Mk3 with the Rode NT4 with the Omni capsules, a Tascam X8 recorder with a pair of Lewitt 440's cardioid and finally a Sound devices MixPre3 recorder and a pair of Omni directional MKH8020's).  On my last morning there, only two birds were in song and even they seemed to be loosing interest in singing and had moved away somewhat from where they had been singing so well in the previous days.  Sometimes Lapwings could be heard in that same place, these can be heard best in the opening recording.  In my 42 years of recording I have only recorded Skylarks twice, but never as well as in this production.  It is very difficult to find somewhere quiet enough to get really clean recordings.  Finally, I stayed in Soomaa Puhkeküla (Soomaa Holiday Village) this is right inside the park and almost directly opposite the field where I made these recordings.

Skylark Heaven (track 4) - free download

Skylark Heaven (track 3) - free download

Skylark Heaven (track 2) - free download

The focal point in these elided consecutive excerpts from a continuous dawn recording is the dawn duet and solo singing of the Kangaroo Island subspecies (lashmari) of the Western Whipbird (Psophodes nigrogularis), also known as the White-bellied Whipbird (Psophodes leucogaster). Background species include: Crescent Honeyeater, Galah, Grey Shrike-thrush, Kangaroo Island subspecies (KI) Crimson Rosella, KI Grey Currawong, KI Superb Fairy-wren, among others. The recording was made near the edge of a waterfall that was completely dry, overlooking a deep valley winding down to the ocean just over a kilometre away.

When listening to this recording (and viewing the accompanying track photograph taken at the location), it is important to embrace in mind that one is listening to an ecosystem soundscape recorded at dawn only five years after untypically catastrophic bushfires (the 'Black Summer' bushfires of 2019-2020) - an untypicality that is scientifically attributable to anthropically-caused climate change. This an ecosystem still in early stages of a struggling recovery (exacerbated by the continuation of the drought that initially catalysed the 'Black Summer' bushfires), and the focal birds that one is listening to were listed, in 2021, according to the IUCN Red List classification, as 'Endangered'. The following is a quotation from the Australian government environmental report that advised this classification:

"The main factor that made the subspecies eligible for listing in the Endangered category was the severe (>50%) reduction in population size in the previous 10 years. This major reduction in population was caused by the largest recorded wildfire on Kangaroo Island that burned for six weeks from late December 2019 to early February 2020. The subspecies’ extent of occurrence is estimated at 5,300 km2 (stable trend), and the area of occupancy is estimated to be 540 km2 (contracted). The population is estimated to have declined to 1,000 mature individuals in the wild due to the Kangaroo Island 2019/2020 bushfires, however this decline is probably not continuing. An analysis by a team from the National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species Recovery Hub shows that a large proportion of the range of Kangaroo Island Western Whipbird was affected by these fires: 51% was burnt in high to very high severity fire, and a further 11% was burnt in low to moderate severity fire. A structured expert elicitation process was used to estimate the proportional population change for this species from pre-fire levels to immediately after the fire and then out to three generations/10 years after the fire, when exposed to fires of varying severity. These results, combined with the spatial analyses of fire overlap, suggest that one year after the fire, the species has experienced an overall decline of 44% from pre-fire levels, but that the decline could be as large as 62% (bound of 80% confidence limits). After 10 years, the estimate for the overall population decline relative to the pre-fire population is predicted to be 33%, but potentially as much as 58% (bound of 80% confidence limit). For comparison, experts also estimated the population change over time in the absence of fire; by 10 years, the overall population of Kangaroo Island Western Whipbird after the fire was estimated to be 30% lower than it would have been, had the 2019/2020 fire not occurred."

Reference: https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/species/pubs/81024-conservation-advice-14122021.pdf

2025.04.08 White-bellied Whipbird. Dawn Songs. Kangaroo Island. Autumn.

This train is named 'Indian Pacific' because it travels between two oceans across the entire Australian continent, from Perth on the Indian Ocean to Sydney on the South Pacific Ocean: a one-way journey of 4,352 kilometres (2,704 miles).

I've made many recordings of it over the years, and this is the best one so far, nearest to what I've been striving to capture. But still a little farther to go...

(This is a 48 kHz 16 bit version of the original 96 kHz 32 bit float recording.)

2025.05.15 Indian Pacific. Shunting.

Wild wolves howling recorded during a tour with WildSweden

Howling Wolves JUN BB1 2025

Sound recordist Colin Hunter 
Founder of the World Sounds project

Dawn At Öjesjön Lake - Västmanland, Sweden

World-Sounds.org