Thank you, Khristos, for this excellent recording and your thought-provoking words.

what is this rhythmically hooting thing here?

Thanks for thinking out loud and sharing a great sound recording.I can't count how many times I've listened to it from start to finish

I don't know Australian birds but I think it's a kookaburra here

And from this recording it is very good to hear how the birds share the frequency area with each other. As if they were listening to each other. There is very little overlap and the sounds are at different pitches

Friday morning, 23rd July 2021. If someone had ever suggested to me to make a dawn recording at this location on a 'normal' Friday morning, I would have exclaimed: "Seriously, are you joking?". This place is so close to the city that a 'normal' Friday morning (and especially so during Winter, with its long nights and short days) would have meant, if exceedingly lucky, something like 70% heavy traffic noise and 30% dawn chorus (including not only birds but an array of various mammals as well).

But here we were, three days into a strict Covid-19 Delta lockdown... Of course, one gets curious. How much difference? After all, from the 'Nature' point of view, as opposed to the 'Human' point of view, it seems fair to say that what is 'normal' is what happens when the 'Human' is not around. In a lockdown situation, 'Human' is still very much around, but rather heavily circumscribed, for his/her own good. And this happens, also, to be beneficial to 'Nature'. So, what might that mean, in terms of 'acoustic ecology'? Well, as it turns out, it means 'a heaven of a lot'.

This excerpt from a much longer recording commences from 06:34, i.e., from mid-Winter's early twilight through to sunrise and after. (The longer recording begins several hours before first light.) Yes, there is some sporadic 'essential' traffic noise to be heard; mainly, as one would expect, in the lower frequencies; and the low-frequency rumble of the occasional 'essential' jet landing at or taking off from the local city airport. But, from this field recordist's perspective, Nature definitely owns this 'Delta' dawn. The overwhelming noise of mechanised humanity has been radically subdued by ... a microscopic virus. Of course, one feels great empathy and sympathy for humanity (after all, one is  human). But the Paradox naturally arises in one's mind, and one naturally reflects and meditates upon it...

If 'Humanity' is, as humans tend to allege, the 'pinnacle of all Nature', why is it that Nature, which utterly grounds and supports all of 'Humanity' and all of its entrepreneurial endeavours, is treated by 'Humanity' as some kind of expendable and disposable raw material, or as rubbish? Isn't it so poetically ironic that 'Humanity' is ultimately quieted not by discussions of 'ecological ethics', not by 'philosophy' - which, as Socrates once said, was born of a sense of 'wonder' at the kosmos - but by a self-concern for survival in the face of a virus that it cannot even perceive with its own natural perceptual senses? But is it really the individual's personal body and life that is of most concern here? Or is it not, rather, the current socio-political economy that is most at risk? Changing this global political economy and its behaviours is clearly not as easy as trying to change the individual body and its behaviours.

This leads to the thought, the question, the problem: What is good for human economy is not necessarily good for natural ecology, and what is good for natural ecology is not necessarily good for human economy. And so, what is to be done?

Such are some traces of the inner reflections and meditations of a field recordist, sitting damp and cold through the night, first light, and dawn, listening in sublimely grateful joy to Nature's 'beautifully musical' voicing of so many 'beautiful' voices... They are simply uttering their existence. They do not conceive of themselves as 'beautiful'. But their intrinsic 'beauty' and 'value', their intrinsic 'music', may be, and arguably should be, best understood from the perspective of a certain 'ecological aesthetics'... 

Best listened to with (good) headphones (with a flat frequency response).

Recorded on the land of the Kaurna people, which is now a Conservation Park.

2021.07.23 A Covid-19 Delta Lockdown Dawn. Winter.

12min - 0415am, First Light
12-54 min - 0415-0457, DAWN
54min - 0457am, Sunrise

Large wildfires are once again uncontrollably threatening much of the intermountain west in North America. Just 5 miles/ 8 km from the oncoming edge of the Cub Creek fire here in Washington is one of my most favorite places to record  anywhere. Thirtymile Meadows is one of the very few places I know of in the continuous 48 United States that is neither rainforest nor remote island where I can set up my microphones, press record, and expect a soundscape free of human-generated noise for at least 4 hours to be the result. Sometimes it can be up to nearly a day.
This was a little more than a month ago, the morning of Summer Solstice. It’s merely an excerpt.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to record there again, at least not a soundscape such as this, filled with birdsong. It’s highly likely my next trip with be filled with the whistling winds that wind around burned snags, the creaking of swaying barren trunks, perhaps the snapping and falling of dead wood.

Stands up on soapbox:
These forests depend upon fire for their very survival, but the rejuvenating fire that feeds their growth is low-level, fuel-consuming, and under-story burning. It cracks open seeds for hardy conifers. It clears room for new seedlings. It brings down larger diseased trees, returning their nutrients to the soil.
The fires we see raging now are not those fires.
For decades we have managed these forests by preventing fire without clearing the accumulating fuels. In the effort to keep “timber stock” available for logging and to protect the encroaching human settlements, all fire is suppressed. Weakened and dried by the advancement of climate change, trees age without replacement while dense, dry growth builds up beneath.
A simple spark (a lightning strike, an untended campfire, the hot under-carriage of a vehicle, a cigarette butt) is all that is needed to start a conflagration that does not clear and rejuvenate, but destroys.
With both the understory and tree cover gone, the ground becomes loose and rocky. The Autumn rains, Winter snows, and Spring melts wash away the fertile soils that nurse future growth.
We lose forest, and it doesn’t grow back. Not all of it. The interiors are safe for now, and can slowly re-grow over the ensuing decades if left un-molested. The edges are gone, however, and each successive fire and monsoon season scales them back farther.
Thirtymile Meadows is at a unique interface of interior, edge, and wet meadow. The meadow will survive, as should the deep forest to its Northeast. The Southwest edge, though, will disappear if the Cub Creek Fire reaches it. Already scarred by human-caused fires nearly twenty years ago, the Southern edge is dry, fuel-filled, and loose.

I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a plan. I just want to make people aware.

I also want to share the beauty of soundscapes that are in danger of disappearing, whether from noise pollution or ecosystem loss.

2021 - 06 - 21 ThirtymileMeadows Across The Dawn

One slightly older recording which I recorded during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020. Forest with thrushes and cuckoos in the foreground, ural owl and bittern in the background

Tascam Dr-100 MK III digital recorder
An Azden microphone pre-amplifier/mixer
Handmade phantom powered Primo Microphones with EM172 capsules. 24 bit 48kHz

Forest Full Of Cuckoos. Alam-Pedja Nature Reserve, Estonia. Mai 29, 2020

The Mistral, is a strong wind that commonly occurs in southern France, blowing down from the north along the lower Rhône River valley toward the Mediterranean Sea. As the wind reaches the Rhône delta, gusts can often hit speeds of 130 km (about 80 miles) per hour.

This recording was taken from the bedroom window of an old "Mas" (farmhouse) just outside Barbentane (Bouches-du-Rhône) with the mics pointing directly at a Plane tree (platane)at least 250 years old.

Sound Devices Mix Pre 6 + 2 x Sennheiser MKH 8040s (ORTF)
24.08.2021

Strong "Mistral" Wind - Barbentane, France

The sound of a rainforest waking up on a rainy day is incredibly evocative. Heavy raindrops fall on leaves and vegetation all around. Long version at https://youtu.be/fRDUdndLSdE

Rainy morning in the jungle

Marco Lucchi: piano, synth and treatments
Michael Grunditz: piano and synthesizer.

Part of album:
https://marcolucchi.bandcamp.com/album/september-is-here-again

Marco Lucchi & Michael Grunditz - September Is Here Again

Sonoris is a broad representation of the main trends in modern ambient music.

Pleq (Poland)
https://pleq.bandcamp.com

Dionisaf (USA)
https://dionisaf.bandcamp.com

Alessandro Barbanera (Italy) 
https://alessandrobarbanera.bandcamp.com

Sebby Kowal (USA) 
https://soundcloud.com/sebbykowalmusic

Michele Andreotti (Italy) 
https://soundcloud.com/michele-andreotti

Soloi Sounds (Japan)
https://soundcloud.com/monotone-orchestra

Chelidon Frame (Italy)
https://chelidonframe.bandcamp.com

Henrik Meierkord (Sweden) 
https://soundbread.se

NK x [Ųvás Gøød It] (Ukraine) 
https://nkxmusic.bandcamp.com

Kenji Katayose (Japan)
https://kenji-katayose.bandcamp.com

Merkaida (Russia)
https://soundcloud.com/merkaida

Adrian Lane (UK)
https://adrianlane.bandcamp.com

July in January (Russia)
https://julyinjanuary.bandcamp.com

CosmoMoose (UK)
https://cosmomoose.com

Sonidos Precarios (Chile)
https://sonidosprecarios-fs.bandcamp.com

Toni Dimitrov (Macedonia)
https://soundcloud.com/sound_00

Mastering by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Photo by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Artwork and cover design by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)

https://www.chitrarecords.com

Sonoris

La Vita Del Piano Di Sopra

striped marsh frogs/northern banjo frog/aquatic life
wet season in the kroombit mountains, qld
february, 2016

Morning Chorus: Above and below a creek in the Kroombit mountains

Forthcoming on Fluid Audio...

Lucia Adam + Alex Smalley
April 2017 - February 2019
Weimar, Germany

www.fluidaudio.bigcartel.com

Tides

Ilm - Tides

From the album, "The Sea Priestess".
Paul Taylor: all instruments.
https://paulstephentaylor.bandcamp.com/album/the-sea-priestess

Blodeuwedd

Under a full moon on an early spring night, several Australian Magpies sing and respond to one another with rich fluty melodies. Dingoes can be heard howling from further up the valley and a Powerful Owl hoots from a nearby forested slope.

Album available here - https://wildambience.com/albums/moonlight-chorus/

Moonlight Chorus

Moonlight Chorus - Australian Magpies sing under a full moon- Album Sample

𝔈𝔵𝔭𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔟𝔩𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔯, 𝔞𝔰 𝔞𝔫 𝔈𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱, 𝔞 𝔐𝔬𝔡𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔇𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 𝔅𝔢𝔦𝔫𝔤.

2021.07.23 A Covid-19 Delta Lockdown Dawn. Winter.

𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕭𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘

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