Nice track Hazel Reeves, google 'bulletrank' they can give you free plays.

It’s May Day, at 4.51am, the nightingales are singing, and I’m about to start livestreaming the dawn chorus from Knepp Estate for Reveil8, a collective sound work, as it starts tracking the live sounds of sunrise across the world for the next 25 hours, finishing at 6am on the 2 May, International Dawn Chorus Day. 

Around 4am I started walking out in the moonlight, accompanied by the distant sound of Nightingales. By 5am the dawn chorus was in its full glorious flow and I was being treated to a cosy serenade by a Nightingale perched in the sallow eager to impress any females flying overhead.

As Artist-In-Residence here I'm recording soundscapes from the scrubland to capture the Knepp rewilding success story, of increasing biodiversity, including bird diversity as you can hear in this recording. As the former arable fields become thorny scrub, a habitat now almost totally erased from the wider countryside, it provides nesting habitat for a remarkable number of Nightingales. Also listen out for the Cuckoo, White Storks clattering their beaks, Song Thrush, Wren, Blackbirds, Blackcaps, Pheasant, Crows, Blue Tits, and a late entry by the Tawny Owl.

The Knepp Nightingales: The Owl and the Nightingale

Keynotes_seabird

I was fascinated by the Winterwatch programme where a Lesser Water Boatman was recorded using a hydrophone sliding his penis over his abdomen to try and attract a mate. This was also recorded using a hydrophone at 3 locations 29.1.23. There was still ice in the pond although it wasn't apparent at first and when it made contact with the contact mic there was a graunchy noise (especially towards the end). Note the Great Tit calling at the beginning and insect activity after 1.00 minute for 22 seconds. I couldn't tell if it was a Lesser Water Boatman but it sounded very similar.

Hydrophone 2 Hogsmill Nature Reserve Pond with Ice And Great Tit

A soundscape composition of St Andrews, West Dean. 

Connection between music and spaces. 
Architectural Acoustics. 
Looking at the way buildings sound.

Church

Cadogan Pier, North Bank of the river Thames, beneath Albert Bridge near Chelsea Embankment.  Built in 1841 Cadogan Pier has been Chelsea's only river transport link for over 150 years and currently it is served by the Thames Clipper Uber Boat service to Putney and Canary Wharf. This is a Hydrophone recording (recording under the water) taken on a sunny February afternoon - you'll hear boats, a helicopter, traffic on the bridge, a few birds, the pier, wind and waves.

Chapter 1:  Cadogan Pier, North Bank of the Thames, Chelsea Embankment London

Biking Through Town

A second visit to the RSPB reserve in Dungeness, the Lade Pits site of the WW2 listening devices - the early radar Sound Mirrors.

Lade Pits, Dungeness

Aeolian Choir

an early spring wetland in central Sweden, just before dawn

Black River Valley wetland, Sweden April 2023

It's Friday the 20th October. I walk out into the Knepp Wildland as the light fails. It smells and sounds-like autumn. It’s the time for the rut when the fallow deer bucks fight for territory and females. I’m up in the oak tree platform, it’s now completely dark, and I’m surrounded. Bucks are belching and antlers are clashing in the woodlands to the left and right of me. I hear splashing in the darkness as a buck decides to cross the lagoon in front of me. A tawny owl calls. Planes fly overhead. I wish I could stay safely in the tree platform until morning light, but dinner calls, and I have to be brave.

#KneppWildland #Rewilding #DeerRut

The Knepp Nightingales: The Owl and the Nightingale

Hazel Reeves

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