Mammals

Listen to a female moose browse on grasses as the sun comes up in Rocky Mountain National Park in June 2021. This location was in the heart of the East Troublesome Fire that ravaged the park in October 2020. 

Wear headphones for the best listening experience!

Recordings are made with permits issued by the park for the purposes of science and education.

Moose Eating at Dawn -- Rocky Mountain National Park

The sounds of the annual elk rut from the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Several bulls and some cows found their way to a small meadow in the mountains near the Kawuneechee Valley. The echoes are  just otherworldly. 

Wear headphones for the absolute best listening experience.

Recordings are made for research and educational purposes under permits issued by the park.

Evening Elk Rut -- Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, U.S.A.

This pair was recorded in July of 2015 in a wilderness canyon within Mesa Verde National Park, CO. Their barking went on for over two hours and lasted well into the morning's dawn chorus. You can also hear a few aircraft flyover.

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.

Coyotes in the Night

This bull moose walked within 6 meters of my recording setup after being bedded down for over an hour. You can hear a post-nap snort, snack, pee break, and eventually him wandering away. You can also hear the sounds of birds, wind, and the river in the background. For the absolute best audio experience, definitely use headphones for this recording!

Recorded using a binaural setup of Audio Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones and a Sound Devices 722 digital recorder.

Close Moose Encounter

I recorded bugling elk in Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado on September 26, 2016. I was surrounded by close to 40 photographers and observers, which you can clearly hear throughout the recording. I thought about removing their noise from the recording to create a more pure sound of wilderness, but I decided against it for one simple reason. It's getting harder and harder to find wildnerness and to find areas free from human noise. Moraine Park is certainly no different. To continue to represent wilderness as free of human noise fails to illuminate the issue of noise pollution. So here is the recording as it existed in the field. Enjoy!

Recorded using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio-Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a binaural setup.

Bugling Elk--Rocky Mountain National Park

Sometimes the animals have a say in the quality of our recordings. This particular elk ate the windscreen covering our microphone, which essentially ended the recording for this site. Pretty cool audio though!

Elk Eats Microphone Windscreen

This recording of the Lamar Valley pack was made in January 2016 near Soda Butte in Yellowstone National Park using a Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone and a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder.

Wear headphones for the best listening experience.

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.

Lamar Valley Wolves -- Yellowstone National Park

This recording of a baby seal was made on 4-30-2017 in the early morning hours along the Pacific Ocean in Fort Stevens State Park in northwest Oregon using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

For the best listening experience, including deep bass of the crashing waves, use headphones!

Seal Pup Calling along the Pacific Ocean

I recorded this sea lion colony at 9pm on April 27, 2017 in Astoria, OR using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica AT4022 omnidirectional microphones places in a homemade binaural housing. 

For the best listening experience, use headphones. Enjoy!

Sea Lion Colony -- Astoria, Oregon

This recording was made in Moraine Park on 5-30-2017 using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

For best experience, wear headphones when listening.

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education. To hear more recordings from the park, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park sound library at https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Coyotes Howling at Dusk -- Rocky Mountain National Park

This recording was made on the morning of September 23, 2017 in Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. The equipment I used was a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and  two Audio Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing. 

The is absolutely one of my favorite recordings I have ever made! My field assistant and I worked ourselves into position well before light on the south side of Moraine Park at around 525am. At first, the males were spread across the meadow, but as the morning progressed and light first started to break, we could see that they all were converging to within 50 yards of us, and eventually got to around 25 yards at one brief, slighty nerve-racking moment. The view and the sounds were just overwhelming and almost perfect, despite the presence of five commercial flights overhead and the sound of distant traffic in the park.

Sounds of interest:
Female calls at 11:55
Two males fighting 39:27
Males 'glug' calls 40:40
Coyote howling 42:10
Female bark alarm call 44:40

Other sounds you might hear are a distant Great Horned Owl, American Crow, Lincoln Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Mountain Chickadee, and the rustle of grass and splashing of water as the males chased each other and the females.

For the best listening experience, definitely wear headphones. 

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.

Elk Rut and Coyote -- Rocky Mountain National Park

This recording was made on the night of October 5, 2017 in Upper Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. The equipment I used was a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica 4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

The elk rut in the park was incredible this year! I got a few excellent recordings that really captured the magic of the rut. Although not an overly compelling recording from a content standpoint, the quality of this recording is unreal. The haunting echoes are so moving as they drift throughout the valley. 

The night was very cold and clear, with a large herd of elk with 3-4 bulls gathered in the meadows. I started out recording in the middle of the meadow, about 100 yards from the herd. There was clearly one dominant bull in the group, but it didn't stop other males from venturing too close. You can hear the drama that plays out echo across the landscape as the dominant male chased the cows and other males back and forth across the meadow.

After about 25 minutes of recording, I sensed that the herd was working its way towards me. I grabbed my gear and relocated about 25 yards to the other side of the road. Less than two minutes later, the dominant bull chased another bull and cows right through the exact spot I had just spend standing. The resulting recording captures all of the action!

For the best listening experience, definitely wear headphones!

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.  To hear more recordings from the park, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park sound library at https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Night-time Elk Echoes -- Rocky Mountain National Park

This recording was made on July 15, 2015 in Mesa Verde National Park using a Roland R05 digital audio recorder and an omnidirectional microphone. This setup was part of a standard acoustical monitoring project by the Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division of the National Park Service.

A pair of coyotes go on barking and yipping for nearly three hours. About 2 hours into the recording, the first bird song of the day is heard as the dawn chorus joins the coyotes. This recording site was in a canyon in a wilderness area of the park. The walls of the canyon cause the calls of the coyotes to really echoes throughout the area.

Wear headphones for the best listening experience. 

Enjoy!

Coyotes and Dawn Chorus -- Mesa Verde National Park

This recording was made on January 10, 2018 at around 645am along the Slough Creek Campground road in Yellowstone National Park using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica AT4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

This pack of coyotes snuck up on me while I was listening to a pack of wolves howl. After the wolves stopped howling the first time, everything went silent. Gradually, I could hear the footprints of several animals running through the snow around me. Because it was still dark, I never saw them, even though they got to within 30-40 ft of where I was seated. Needless to say, they put on quite a show. Several minutes afterwards, the wolves resumed howling. Quite a morning for canids!

For the best listening experience, wear headphones!

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.

Coyotes Wake Up in Yellowstone

This recording was made on January 10, 2018 at around 700am along the Slough Creek Campground road in Yellowstone National Park using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica AT4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

The Junction Butte pack surprised me as I was hiking along the Slough Creek Campround road before dawn. I instantly fell to the ground and began recording. This pack of 8-9 members was about 300-400 yards away, yet their howls were very clear and eerie as they traveled along the winter landscape. Also in the recording, you can hear the calls of Black-Billed Magpies rousing from their roosts and the intermittent sloshing of Slough Creek as the wind bends the sounds across the valley.

Wear headphones for the best listening experience.

Enjoy!

Wolves Howling at Dawn in Yellowstone National Park

This recording is a mixture of three different recordings I've made across the American West. The primary part of this recording comes from Yellowstone National Park on May 20, 2018 and features the sound of a bull bison wading across a stream and feeding on grass. This was recorded using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and a Telinga parabolic dish system. The background sounds of the river and thunderstorm come from Rocky Mountain National Park. These were recorded in 2017 using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica AT4022 microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing.

Wear headphones for the best listening experience.

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education.

Photo Credit: Mr. Carlos Linares

Bison Feeding During Thunderstorm -- Yellowstone National Park

This recording was made in Rocky Mountain National Park on October 5, 2018 at around 8pm using a Sound Devices 722 digital audio recorder and two Audio Technica AT4022 omnidirectional microphones placed in a homemade binaural housing. You can hear multiple bull elk bugling, as well as a Great Horned Owl and Coyotes. Unfortunately, you can also hear distant traffic and generator at a nearby campground.

Wear headphones for the best listening experience.

Enjoy!

Recordings were made under permits issued by the park and for the purpose of science and education. To hear more recordings from the park, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park sound library at https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Elk Rut and Rain Shower -- Rocky Mountain National Park

Travel over 2,000 miles during spring bird migration 2019 with project lead Dr. Jacob Job and audio producer Jacqueline Van Meter to examine the mutual challenges that migratory birds and humans face due to human activity on the planet. 'Voices of a Flyway' stimulates active, mindful listening to nature, reintroduces us to the species and places of our past, deepens our connection to the natural world, and heals our collective mindset about our place within it. 

Project lead Dr. Job is a conservationist, science communicator, natural sounds recordist, National Geographic Explorer, and bird watcher. He travels the country and world, documenting the sounds of nature in our nation's most treasured lands, building connections between people and these places, and working to advocate for their protection.

Mammals

Gavia immer