Yellow-headed Blackbird, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, courtship display, with flutey head!

Yellow-headed Blackbird, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, males in dominance fight

Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus

Love that country and really like Yellow-heads too.   The Canyon Wrens in the background are great.

Really nice recording and terrific explanation!

I love this. It just got thrown up by the algorithm I think. Odd because it came after a political podcast. Bless the algorithm.

next door the loss

SenSen- DESKZ

SenSen - Sinergia Limitrofe

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

In a summer night in Morvan, a duet of two tawny owls with great green bush crickets and wood crickets.

Tawny owls duet in summer - recorded in Morvan (France) w/ Gregoire Chauvot

Grain | Stream
for 2 pianists and 2 percussionists & electronics

Première:
October 22nd, 2023 - Donaueschinger Musiktage 

Performers:
Yarn/Wire
Russell Greenberg, Sae Hashimoto (Percussion)
Laura Barger, Julia Den Boer (Klavier)

The idea of stream recalled in the title and central in the piece has been inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s painting Alchemie consists of two canvases showing a dry desert-like landscape connected by a balance. A rainfall of salt and sunflower seeds falling down from the balance’s dishes. 
That’s a strong symbol of a possible new life re-growing from the desert landscape which is directly connected with the art of alchemy transforming lead into gold.


On the other hand streams of grains (especially salt) are traditionally associated with purification rituals of mind and spirit.
Driven by the strong symbolic meaning of this canvas and the message of hope that it conveys to me, I imagined a sound-world made of grains and streams which arise from silence and saturate space and time until leading the perception to an in-between dimension where temporal references are loosen.

Grain I Stream

Friction n° 20

Night Listening means sitting, through the night, in a chosen location, as still and quiet as possible, often for many hours, absorbed in purely listening, while recording. This is an excerpt from a recent Night Listening. It involves three Brushtail Possums, and one Red Fox. The responses of the Possums to the barking of the Fox are very interesting. (Don't start with the volume raised to more than 50 to 60 per cent: some of the fox barks are quite close and loud.)

Recorded on the land of the Kaurna people.

2023.12.28 Night Listening. Night Forest. Red Fox and Brushtail Possums. Early Summer.

I've already posted a downloadable excerpt from this recording, which is of the only performance so far of this piece (in February 2005, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tadaaki Otaka). Here it is in its entirety. I hope I won't get into trouble for posting it but how else is anyone going to hear this music? which was presumably the idea behind commissioning and performing it...

NO (2004) for orchestra

Video: https://youtu.be/IydYOyJmGrk

Alessandro Perini - "N-S" (2017)
for cello, piano and tape

• Francesco Dillon, cello
• Emanuele Torquati, piano

From the concert "Distant Voices, Malmö"

May 5th, 2017 - Inter Arts Center, Malmö (Sweden)

Curated by Hertzbreakerz

In collaboration with Ars Nova, with the support of Konstnärsnämnden and Längmanska Kulturfonden

http://alessandroperini.com/?p=1193

"N-S" for cello, piano and tape (Francesco Dillon / Emanuele Torquati), 2017

This lively dawn chorus was recorded in a small pothole coulee in Eastern Washington, one of the numerous Seep Lakes of the Channeled Scablands.
This is the Columbia Plateau, a large basalt flow cut through by the Columbia River. During the last ice age, 10-20 thousand years ago, the ice dam blocking Glacial Lake Missoula collapsed, unleashing one of the largest known ancient mega-floods. This flood, and dozens of smaller floods swept through Washington to the Columbia River. It washed the topsoil off much of the plateau, ripping out chunks of basalt and eroding great channels we call coulees. The best known of these is the Grand Coulee, known both for its size and for the dam that filled it with water. Early white settlers in the area called this land "scablands" because nothing could grow on it.
In the 1900s the Columbia Basin Project, the largest water reclamation project in the US, saw the creation of a network of dams and reservoirs including the Grand Coulee. Responsible for the upheaval and forced relocation of thousands of indigenous peoples, eliminating their access to the migratory Salmon their lives relied upon, decimated fish stocks above the dams, and rendering numerous towns and settlements uninhabitable, the CBP worthy of a longer history lesson another day. The expansion of agriculture production has been proven beneficial, turning North Central Washington into one of the largest and most productive tree fruit producing areas on the planet.
One unintended consequence that is either beneficial or disastrous depending your outlook has been the hydrological seepage from the reservoirs into the many downstream coulees and potholes, resulting in the creation of hundreds of lakes of varying sizes. These brand new wetland ecosystems quickly became popular with migratory and resident wetland birds who now call them home. They are also regularly stocked and prove popular fishing destinations.
The pothole coulee this recording is from is one of those new wetlands.
One final history/ ecological history lesson: the American Bullfrog is indigenous to the eastern portion of North America. It's historical range just barely reached what is now the Oklahoma. During the Gold Rush period of the 1800s they were imported to the West to meet the "sophisticated tastes" of wealthy East Coasters. Frog farms were set up throughout California, Oregon, and Washington to meet demand. When demand died and the farms closed, farmers released their stock in wetlands, creating one of the most voracious invasive pests in the West. Read more about it here: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/aug/15/bad-news-bullfrogs/
I have mixed feelings when I hear bullfrogs in the soundscape. They're an invasive, dangerous pest. But can we, WILL we be able to restrain them back to their original  range? It's doubtful. Just as Pigeons, European Starlings, Chukar, and Pheasants among other species have become an indelible part of our wild spaces, should bullfrogs just be accepted? I'm mixed. I love the sound of a bullfrog chorus. It's pretty spectacular. It's also a sign of a wetland zone. If I hear bullfrogs, I go looking.
So to the recording…
This is a true Dawn chorus. Tt captures the entire Dawn, from First Light, 4:33 AM, through Sunrise, 5:03 AM.
There are three dominant voices here: Coulee crickets (I'm not making this up: Anabrus longipes), Yellow-headed Blackbirds, which, if I had to pick, would be my single favorite bird, and the Bullfrogs. Listen to the crickets, thick and lush in the twilight, slowly drop off and become a sparser presence towards the end. In a few hours they'll stop singing during the period the sun is highest.
You'll also hear of Canyon Wrens, with their mournful drooping, Red-winged Blackbirds, Common Nighthawks, Tree Swallows, and a distant Rock Wren.
Click through the comments  and markers in the soundcloud track for callouts of some of the various voices.

At Northwest Soundscapes:
http://soundeziner.com/2020/06/coulee-dawn/

Coulee Dawn, 2020-06-20

Field Recordist / Sound designer
Shhhhh. Listening to nature.

To license sounds or for all other inquiries: info@andymartinsound.com

#naturesound #naturesoundscape #fieldrecording #naturesounds #savequiet #listentonature #soundscape

Coulee Dawn, 2020-06-20

Andy Martin, Field Recordist

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