Episódios
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In 1977, we sent a Golden Record of the sounds of Earth into space with NASA's Voyager probes.
This 'cosmic' calling card inspired the program team to make this - a golden record of Australian sounds.
It varies from Nature Track - there are human made sounds and there are human voices, these soundscapes are layered sounds from all over Australia - they're not natural soundscapes.
To create the soundscape for our vinyl record - our teams recorded over 200 bespoke sounds - many of which have been arranged into the final composition. Sounds were gathered from as far as the Perth Canyon (20km west coast of Rottnest Island) and as remote as Warramunga in the Northern Territory.
Ann's listening notes:
01:00 The beach, above and under the water. 03:00 Pygmy Blue whale song06:00 Catching a ferry in Sydney07:20 A plane, there:s always a plane. 08:30 Catching a train09:00 Can you hear Tom Thum, the beat boxer here? Also you can hear street sounds from Newtown in Sydney. 10:10 A snippet of a conversation that has a swear word in it. 10:30 Iconic Australian pedestrian crossing with the sounds of the city. 11:40 Cicadas buzz, a lyrebird sings the taps are Kristian Benton searching for trees to fell to make a yidaki.16:00 Natural Sounds are often marred by the sounds of leaf blowers, whipper snippers and other machinery. 21:15 Car on a country road with cow and cockies. a typical Australian scene.22:30 The Orange Agricultural Show - announcements, motorbikes, chickens, shearing and whip cracking. 24:30 A wood chopping competition. 25:30 Driving on a dirt road - hear the dusty texture and the corrugations.27:15 Warramunga Seismic and Infrasound Research Station - one of the quietest places on earth.31:15 Wild cockatiels calling.
RECORDINGS: Nick Peterson, Leo Sullivan, Peter Lenaerts, Sarah Henty, Dr Capri JoliffeSOUND DESIGN: Peter LenaertsSERIES PRODUCER: Elle GibbonsEXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Penny Palmer
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No music. No voices. Just the sound of a creek bed in outback Australia.
In the Murchison district in Western Australia you're surrounded by low lying ranges where rocks have been found that are 4.4 billion years old — they're almost as ancient as the planet itself.
Among the crests and dips of Wajarri country is a creek bed on Boolardy Station. Not flowing, but water is still there. And the places where there is water in this arid environment – well, it's a mecca for birdlife.
Listen for: chiming wedgebills, lots of flies and other insects, rainbow bee-eaters, crested bellbirds, babblers and diamond doves among many many more.
Mix Engineer: Isabella Tropiano.
This program is produced on the land of the Wathawurung people.
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No music, no human voices. Just the sound of an epic summer storm rolling on through the evening.
I recorded this at my home. It had been a hot day, and in the late afternoon there was a crack of thunder. I walked out, set the recorder near the woodpile and recorded into the night.
In this recording you can hear rain falling, hitting the earth and also hitting the microphones. And you can hear lots and lots of thunder.
At first, the afternoon and evening chorus continues, but as the storm intensifies, just the cockies scream. Then, as darkness falls, insects take up the lulls between thunder and rain.
Mix Engineer: Isabella Tropiano.
This program is produced on the land of the Wathawurung people.
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No music, no human voices, just the sound of night falling over bushland near Narrabri, recorded by the ABC's Ann Jones. It sounds like camping.
Narrabri is in North West NSW, in an incredibly fertile farming area. And yep, you guessed it, where it's fertile, it means you won't get much bushland left intact.
This bushland is a patch on the Llara Farm which is used by the University of Sydney for research. I was lucky enough to travel there to film a program about technology and nature for 'Catalyst' on ABC TV.
This recording differs a little from some of the others I've made for Nature Track. For example, there is no way that I can completely remove the distant sound of highway movement, of the endless trucks ferrying agricultural products towards the city.
But this is an incredibly endearing mix of the insect chorus for me. It sounds like camping.
A chorus of ravens in the distance, along with cockies going to sleep, and some sounds I cannot identify kick off this most relaxing soundscape yet.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:00:45 I have no idea what this insect is, but I love it.
00:10:20 I think this is actually a boobook – they make this sound when they're close to another boobook, rather than calling across a distance.
00:30:35 One of the many sounds produced by foxes. They have a really wide vocabulary and can sound human-like, bird-like and just plain scary in the night.
00:41:00 A bat circles past on its nightly food run echo-locating for both navigation and prey detection.
00:46:30 A sneaky dog. I can't tell you how much time I spend pulling dogs out of nature recordings. They're almost ubiquitous in Australian landscapes
00:58:40 I can hear a frog here, that's sounds a bit like a ruler twanged against a school desk. I think it might be a spotted marsh frog – Limnodynastes tasmaniensis.
01:12:00 A distant boobook, the smallest owl in Australia, along with some fox calls and bat flybys.
01:21:00 The terrifying scream of a barn owl. Yes, they look magnificent. Sound terror-ific too.
Mix Engineer: Isabella Tropiano.
This program is produced on the land of the Wathawurung people.
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No music. No voices. Just the sound of a quiet ocean inlet in the early evening, recorded by the ABC's Dr Ann Jones. This shoreline is home to many wallabies; will they make any sound?
This was recorded over the summer of 2021/22 as I was spending time on Phillip Island / Millowl in Victoria, filming for 'Meet the Penguins' on ABC TV. I put the recorder out at Rhyll Inlet as the sun is setting. It's been a hot day and the cicadas are calling. Rhyll Inlet is a mixture of saltmarsh, mudflats, mangroves and some scrubby bits too. Slightly uphill, away from the water, there are grassy areas where wallabies abound. This is where the recording is taken.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:00:39 Lower toned repeating call given in a short burst is the white-eared honeyeater. This bird is striking. It's somewhere between green and yellow, with a black face and a blob of white right behind its eye.
00:02:20 This is still that same honeyeater.
00:02:35 Eastern rosellas – gorgeous birds and I can just imagine their tails fanning and shaking as they speak with each other.
00:03:40 The kookaburras are joining the chorus – announcing to one and all how strong they are as a family, and how well defended their territory is.
00:06:08 MAGPIES! This chorus gets better and better.
00:07:38 The gorgeous clear flute-like quality gives this away as a grey shrike thrush. Followed closely by a masked lapwing. Phillip Island is a hot spot for masked lapwings, which like to rest on the ground. So, the fox-free island means they have good numbers.
00:09:02 The red wattlebird sounds as if it's the shutter mechanism on a giant, broken camera.
00:10:50 The first incursion of a cape barren goose into the recording.
00:18:12 This is a wallaby moving, they sometimes thump down with surprising force.
00:18:40 …and there it goes.
00:21:45 The GST is really giving a fantastic performance.
00:22:06 It wouldn't surprise me if this is a swamp wallaby snapping a stick to eat. They're voracious.
00:25:40 The masked lapwing (maybe known to you as a kid as the spur-winged plover) goes past screaming.
00:26:05 This is a grey butcherbird and it makes me doubt some of my grey shrike thrush IDs from earlier – they both can sing as if playing an enchanted flute.
00:39:12 You can hear the fantails beak clacking as it calls, and flies about. It sounds like tiny little knuckles being cracked in rapid succession.
Mix Engineer: Isabella Tropiano.
This program is produced on the land of the Wathawurung people.
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No music. No human voices. Just the sound of a frog chorus and a pre-dawn rain shower in arid Western Australia, recorded on location by the ABC's Dr Ann Jones.
Get in a car in Perth and drive 4 hours northeast to sit beside a pool of water as the frogs call and rain rolls in. It's an hour before dawn.
This soundscape was recorded on Badimaya country on Charles Darwin Reserve which is owned by Bush Heritage Australia. I was there to film an amazing tree called the sandalwood for 'Australia's Favourite Tree' on ABC TV. The reserve is on the edge of the Southwest Botanical Province, which has more plant biodiversity that a tropical forest, and also the arid Eremean areas. And because it's on the borderlands, there are so many plants, animals, birds, and in this recording in particular amphibians to love.
00:00:00 The first thing that you hear is the Western Toadlets — Pseudophryne occidentalis. At least, this is the best guess without a DNA sample. You see, this area is in the overlap between two different types of toadlets which sound EXTREMELY similar.
They're not toads, they're toadlets, and very happy with the amount of water around by the sound of it.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:02:40 The first of many microbat flybys in this recording. You can hear the echolocation clicks as the bats zoom past searching for food. That is, you'll hear them unless you are a little bit older, or have some hearing impairment at the higher frequencies, then you'll not be able to hear the bats, which sit at about 11500khz and above.
00:07:05 To be honest, I'm not sure who this bird is, but my gut feeling tells me they're disturbed a bit by something rather than the true start of the dawn chorus. The clicking, sort of tapping sound is soft rain hitting the microphones.
00:09:00 No wonder the frogs are calling. Here comes the rain.
00:49:30 Who dipped into the water? Or perhaps crapped into the water from above?
01:05:10 If you're a person lucky enough to still hear those high frequencies, you can hear the hunting buzz here as the bat zeros in on a flying insect to eat.
01:07:00 A couple of insects, or maybe just one joins in the chorus. There's one sound that constantly jiggles, and one that pulses. It is perhaps a cricket and or a cicada.
01:14:20 is this the real start of the dawn chorus from the birds? Or perhaps just a rustling in the pre-dawn.
01:34:50 A smattering of rain drops. Do the toadlets sound happier or is it just me?
01:52:40 A willy wagtail announces its time to get up and start the true bird chorus of the morning. There's also a spiny-cheeked honeyeater in there.
Thanks to Dr Elliot Leach and Dr Jodi Rowley for helping me confirm what I was hearing.
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No music, no voices. Just the sound of the mountain ash forest, recorded by the ABC's Dr Ann Jones.
The mountain ash is the tallest flowering plant in the world, a eucalypt that can reach 90m in height. And beneath its arbour is an incredible array of wildlife, including an incredible chorus of birds.
I recorded this while filming 'Australia's Favourite Tree' for ABC TV near Marysville in Victoria.
It was a cold, misty morning on Taungurong Country and among the first sounds that can be heard in this recording is a male lyrebird practising some of his repertoire – both mimicry and his own sounds.
00:01:51 The lyrebird is imitating a black cockie here.
00:03:42 this lazer sort of sound is the lyrebird's own sounds.
00:06:25 The lyrebird makes both the male and female components of the whip bird call!
00:06:55 Heeeeere comes a parrot, screaming as it goes.
00:07:20 Pied Currawongs call to each other in the distance.
00:23:00 A fly fly-by!
00:35:10 Actual yellow tailed black-cockatoos incoming!
00:36:40 This incredibly sharp-sounding call is the pilot bird, a small brownish bird of the understorey. So-called because it sometimes 'pilots' the lyrebird, taking advantage of the lyrebirds superior digging skills to grab invertebrate prey uncovered.
00:56:40 Tune your ear to higher frequencies to hear a wonderful insect calling in pulses.
01:02:40 We've got some sulphur-crested cockatoo begging happening here. Consistent nagging like a toddler at the top of a tree.
01:30:50 A pair of real whipbirds make an appearance here, with a two-part duet consisting of build and whip, and then an answering 'chew chew.'
01:34:20 The wing beats of a bird in flight.
01:56:30 Among the smaller birds, perhaps scrubwrens and thornbills, and definitely a grey fantail and a pilotbird, you can hear the black-cockies take flight and call to each other, the pied currawong.
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No music, no talking, just the sound of a rain storm in the desert.
Wiluna is a town on the Traditional lands of the Martu people in Western Australia. It’s on gorgeous arid country, about 960km east of Perth. After days of dry heat in excess of 40, it was late afternoon when a huge storm rolled in. Nowhere has storms like the desert, where the hot air rises off the ground to meet the clouds with huge rumbles and rolls that expand across the whole horizon. The rain continued on and off all night and into the next day when I got up in the morning to smell the wet sands and concrete of the town. Each burst of rain was greeted by bird song throughout the sunrise, and as the human occupants of the town slowly woke up.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
04:28 Here comes the rain on the tin roof. The galahs scatter, calling. 5:10 A bonded pair of mudlarks (tiwily-tiwilypa), sometimes called peewees or magpie larks. sing a duet together.
10:50 The pied butcherbirds (kararaputa) sing through the rainfall — a repetitive, slightly melancholy melody, and occasionally their diagnostic cackling call that almost sounds like yelling "missing you!" at the end of a quick phone call.
14:30 This repetitive chirping call is a honeyeater, but which sort? Perhaps a yellow-throated miner (piiny-piinypa)? Comment below if you know!
16:24 White-plumed honeyeater (Inatjara) calls sound a little bit like a slide whistle.
20:40 This is probably the alarm call of the white-plumed honeyeater, letting its colleagues know of a danger or annoyance.
21:28 The mudlarks stay in touch and reinforce their relationship by repeating their duet throughout the day.
26:40 Little corellas start to fly and call in tremulous, quaver-y voices. It also sounds as if there is at least one young one with them begging for food, making a monotonous raspy grinding call from a tree.
28:30 Cutting through above all the other birds is the tiny black-and-white willie wagtail (tjitirttjitirt). This call is diagnostic of the willie, and it will make it through the day and night. Listen also for the scolding chika-chika-chika call that the willie will make occasionally, probably to stay in touch with its family members in this context. You can also here two variations on the mudlark duets in this sequence, along with the little corellas.
37:16 There are two possibilities for this corvid call – a torresian crow or a little crow (not tiny ones, that is their species name: little crow).
37:40 The willie wagtail is back!
41:30 The birds all seem to be responding to the rain, or perhaps a change in pressure associated with the rain? There are so many calls from the different species here.
42:20 The incomparable sound of rain on a tin roof.
48:38 The crows are at it again!
47:00 You can occasionally hear a deeper click as water drops actually hit my microphone through this section, the drops were so big they were bouncing up off the ground and up onto the little box I’d put my recorder on under a shelter. My microphone covers were absolutely saturated after I finished this recording.
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No music, no voices, just imagine you’re camping beside a creek in early spring.
Listening Notes from Ann:
It was the first hot day of Spring on Wadawurrung Country west of Melbourne. Out of bed before the sun, I walked through the bush listening to the last of the nocturnal sounds, and found a place on a ridgeline overlooking a creek.
There are hundreds of large trees with lots of hollows all scattered across the steep slope down to the creek and I set the recorders out just as the dawn chorus begins in earnest. There is the smallest of overlap between the boobooks calling as they settled to sleep, and the magpies and kookaburras leading the dawn chorus with their greetings to the sun (and territorial threatening screams of course).
There are so, so many species in this recording – too many to list entirely!
00:00:16 The boobook calls. Listen for a second boobook, who calls at 00:00:48, with a slightly different pitch. In the middle of the night, you can hear the boobooks call right along the creek.
00:01:00 Raucous and loud – a family of kookaburras laughs in chorus. They’re communicating with each other and their neighbouring rivals that they’re awake, and fit, and ready to defend their territory today.
00:07:50 Hear a kangaroo stomping and rustling in the grass and sticks probably heading down the hill to find a cosy spot in the lomandra to sleep for the day.
00:10:20 It’s as if they all knew it was going to be a clear, warm day – everyone is singing and calling this morning. What a cacophony!
00:21:40 Sulphur Crested Cockatoos rarely go anywhere without announcing themselves.
00:23:48 The penetrating, rapid fire pipe of the white throated tree creeper repeats itself. These birds possess special feet that enable them to spend their life bouncing up tree trunks searching for insects, rather than grasping onto horizontal branches.
00:26:50 The sound of several pardalotes can be heard throughout the recording with their repetitive stutter note – dik-dik… dik-dik. There are both striated and spotted pardalotes in this recording and there are several nests in the area in tiny little hollows in the trees as well as miniscule little burrows dug into the sides of the track and creek.
00:37:30 Ravens. It’s notoriously difficult to tell the difference between raven species between calls, and I’ve seen both Australasian Ravens and Little Ravens at this spot. But, I do think these are little ravens, because there are so so so many of them. They’re all up and down the creek line communicating with each other with varying intensity and little ravens have a tendency to gather like this.
00:39:20 This is a Shining bronze cuckoo a small bird that looks like it has a slightly spiky hair do and wears a stripey t shirt. Even though it’s wings are sort of iridescent, moving from olive green to eggplant purple, this small bird is inconspicuous and stays hidden in trees searching for caterpillars, sex and someone else’s nest to lay in.
00:42:45 The Australian Magpie’s ability to sing that many notes at once will always astound me. In this part of Australia, the magpies are white backed magpies and even though they’ve got babies in the area, they’ve not been swoopy.
00:44:00 In these ten seconds I can hear: little raven, two types of pardalotes, red wattlebird, grey shrike thrush and a baby magpie, common eastern froglets and there’s also a bird that has a descending whistle that I can’t quite place.
00:45:02 here is a baby magpie annoying its parents for food. They’re almost ALWAYS hungry.
00:45:20 A mix of long-billed corellas and sulphur crested cockatoos in this group. There are several really big old holey trees here and I think some of them have several nesting hollows in each.
00:46:45 Extremely high-pitched melodic call of the grey fantail, darting about waggling it’s tail and scowling.
00:47:45 The repeated single note of the Eastern Spinebill, which has a long skinny downward turned beak especially for getting delicious liquid from flowers. They dart about everywhere making wing flurries and generally being high on sugar as far as I can tell.
00:50:20 The Grey Shrike thrush is calling – these birds are possibly one of the most common mystery sounds’ we get sent over at Off Track. They look as though they’re a bird drawing in grey scale, with the smoothest looking plumage and a little hook on the end of the beak. They sing like angels from hiding places, and can sometimes put on a real performance.
00:52:12 Magpie parents have the patience of a million kindergarten teachers combined.
00:54:20 Mixed in with the gorgeous magpie calling there are grey shrike thrush, rosella flight calls, Olive backed orioles, cockatoos, ravens, pardalotes, froglets. And, at 00:54:04 I *think* one of the magpies flies away – you can hear its wings in the air.
00:56:30 Rosella calls – could be crimson or eastern – though crimson are more likely in the area. And over the next minute they start bell calling to each other… which is lovely, except for that cockie making spewing screams over the top of everything.
00:58:55 Is that a brown thornbill?
01:05:20 As the parent gets closer the baby magpie’s calls change?
01:05:20 I haven’t worked out what those low grunts are – some are rhythmic, some are longer. Is it a kookaburra with a sore throat? A baby kookaburra complaining about its accommodation? A possum being angry at a cockatoo? If you have an idea leave a comment!
01:12:20 The call of a Pallid cuckoo is like a slowly ascending set of peeps. This is one of those birds which lays its eggs in the nest of another species and leaves them to bring up the kids.
00:18:15 A rufous whistler calling out amongst the din – listen for relatively quick sliding whistles, almost whip-like, that sometimes are repetitive and other times sound like mosh pit madness with many notes thrown together jumping all over the place.
00:19:26 A juvenile raven is getting its breakfast. That’s the sound of the regurgitated food going down its gullet! And, judging by those extremely quiet ticks, someone has landed very close to the microphone and is moving in the tree (my guess is a rosella, they click and crack in trees all day and it’s often this sound that gives them away rather than their calls). AND, this is followed closely by a pied currawong in the distance.
01:20:52 A Superb fairy-wren with an extremely high-pitched call that gets faster like a golf ball circling a hole until it blasts off into manic neighing like the tiniest horse in the world. There’s also, I think, that weird kookaburra calls going on in this patch. I’m not sure.
01:23:21 Hear that kookaburra carrying on?
01:28:30 You can tell that day is well and truly underway and the temperature is rising, because that insect chorus starts pulsating. It also signals the end of the dawn chorus – from boobook to cicada.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of night time at a swamp on Wadawarrung Country in Victoria.
Listening Notes from Ann Jones:
There are at least three species of frogs calling all the way through this recording – maybe more. And they provide a wonderful blanket of noise for you to snuggle under. Here’s what I can hear:
00:00:07 – The ‘tonk’, ‘bonk’ and ‘donk’ of the pobblebonk (Limnodynastes dumerilii). These frogs are sometimes also called banjo frogs because of their plucking call. They are a relatively big frog, maybe 8 or 9 cm long when fully grown, with a very pleased look on their face.
00:00:15 This is the spotted marsh frog (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis) and it’s an interesting one. It sounds a bit like a striped marsh frog. But Jordann and Gracie from the Australian Museum FrogID team assure me it’s the southern call race of the spotted! In the north part of its range, the call of the spotted marsh frog is entirely different than in western Victoria.
00:00:44 The consisted creaking of thousands of common eastern froglets. Individually they sometimes sound like a ratchet creaking back, but together it’s a cacophony of clicks all blending together. These are tiny little things, even when fully grown they might hit a top of 3 cm. They’re brown, and sometimes they have gorgeous stripes in different brown and olive tones which makes them look a little bit like a lolly.
00:01:02 The high-pitched groups of calls that start softer and build in intensity are brown tree frogs. The frequencies really can hurt the human ear. These are a smallish brown frog that can live in drier parts of the bush. They don’t need to be right in the water all the time.
00:18:22 This is a set of sonar searching calls of a freetail bat. There are few microbats whose calls sit within the range of human hearing, and your ability to hear this will depend on your age and how well you’ve looked after your hearing.
00:25:20 This is the growling barky cough of the brushtail possum. With this call it is communicating its territory to the other possums in the vicinity.
00:30:10 The possum comes very, very close to the microphone and you can also hear lambs calling in the distant farmland.
00:46:10 There is something softly creeping here. Probably not the brushtails which tend to stampede everywhere they go. You can just hear the very, very quiet clicks of branches moving every once in a while, over the coming minutes.
00:50:20 More bat sounds. It is clicking and listening to the bounce back echoes to determine where its prey might be.
01:02:30 The brushtail is back.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of the forest waking up. I made this recording on a wintery morning, outside a hut high up in the mountains of Gippsland on Gunaikurnai land. I arrived in the dark and didn’t realise how high up the hill I was. As the sun rose it took time for it to reach the bottom of the gullies, and so the dawn chorus extended longer and was more distant and echoey. It’s harder than normal to decipher what’s what in this recording because all around the hut there were lyrebirds singing, and they’re masters of imitation.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:00:00 As the sun rises and warms the roof, icy water drips to the ground creating clicks and drips throughout. Immediately, several lyrebird males can be heard rehearsing their songs. This isn’t normally the time of day that they’d be wooing a female directly, it’s more for practice and territorial defence, and also perhaps luring a female towards their dancing mound. They call like this throughout the coldest part of winter.
00:02:06 Rather than an actual whipbird, I think that this is the lyrebird imitating a whip bird!
00:03:00 I think the interminable piping is from a white-throated tree creeper.
00:05:00 It is possibly a striated thornbill group twittering close to the microphone, but certainly one of the ‘LBJ’ class. (That is what birders call ‘Little Brown Jobs’ – birds that are all small and brown and difficult to identify.)
00:08:18 A wattlebird chucks.
00:25:30 These are rosella sounds I think, the chattering that keeps them in contact as they move.
00:30:39 Is it a kookaburra or a lyrebird imitating a kookaburra? I think the latter as it cuts off rather awkwardly – kookaburras often wind down at the end of their calls in a very funny moany-giggle.
00:32:22 Here the lyrebird imitates, briefly, a black cockie within its stream of song. Other calls it imitates include grey shrikethrush, currawongs, magpies and wattlebirds.
01:08:30 Actual yellow-tailed black cockatoos! There’s a story that they travel before rain but I’m not sure if anyone has done the science on that one. These are big cockies, much bigger than a sulphur crested. They have yellow patches under the tale and fly with long wing strokes somewhat like a waterbird. Absolutely majestic and you are obliged to stop and point to them when you see them.
01:13:55 A kangaroo or wallaby thumps past.
01:34:30 A small flock of gang-gang cockatoos fly past, which sound like squeaky doors. About the size of a galah they are mostly black. The males have red heads and instead of a crest like a cockie, they have a little feathery flourish on the top of their head like a centurion’s helmet. The females are mostly black with exquisite red detailing and together they call in this incredibly unique, needs-oiling croak.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of the forest waking up. This recording was made while traveling through Whadjuk Nyoongar land, WA. The birds differ between east and west Australia. That huge swathe of arid country in between has meant that birds have evolved into different sub-species, species and variants.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:00:00 Normally I would cut out my footsteps walking away from the microphone, but this audio is too beautiful. You can hear carolling magpies, as well as black cockatoos. These are either Baudin’s or Carnaby’s or both. They sometimes do hang out together. Both are endangered species.
00:04:05 An Australian ringneck parrot. This is about the size of a rosella and with a wonderful green body, a black head and a yellow neck around the nape of its head.
00:04:20 A pee-wee or mudlark calling here. They vary slightly across the continent.
00:14:50 Ringnecks are sometimes called twenty-eights in WA because that is sort of what their call sounds like – ‘twenty-eight’.
00:21:44 Here there is a very, very high-pitched tinkling of a grey fantail, along with a magpie, an Australian raven and (we think) a grey shrike-thrush. Thanks to Tegan Douglas form Birdlife Australia who helped me with these sounds!
00:24:40 If you’ve got a particularly good sound system, you might be able to pick up the rhythmic moan of the bronzewing pigeon.
00:26:39 The Australian raven is calling in the background here. It’s a big black bird with a funny beard that pops out, making its neck look really chunky.
00:28:20 Here comes a grey currawong with its chiming call echoing through the bushland. These are handsome, large birds. Maybe something that looks halfway between a magpie and a raven. Grey currawongs are mostly grey in different hues, but with white tips on the wings and tail. They walk and hop on the ground to forage for insects but are strong fliers and happily scale trees, ripping off bark to look for insects and raiding fruit trees.
00:43:00 Western gerygone (pronounced jerr-i-go-nee) is a sweet little hazel eyed greyish bird with an adorable little tail and a sweet little two note, three syllable call. They spend their lives inside bushes and within the branches of trees, frustrating bird watchers. They occasionally flutter out to catch an insect on the wind. They build a nest that hangs off a twig and is wrapped in spiders’ web.
00:44:14 Probably a yellow-plumed honeyeater making those whistling calls with a red wattlebird making ‘chucks’, along with Australian raven moans and common bronzewing droning on in the background.
Thanks to Adrian Boyle, Tegan Douglas, Erika Roper and Nigel Jackett for helping ID some of the sounds. I had no hope.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of a spring shower hitting a corrugated iron roof. This recording was made on Wadawurrung Country, in west Victoria, Australia.Listening notes from Ann Jones:
00:02:00 Wind in the trees, and grey currawongs calling to each other in chiming duets.
00:06:00 Galahs fly past, their nesting hollow is close by.
00:07:41 I think this could be brown thornbills, tiny little birds. But would you believe, they’re actually sort of chunky for thornbills, at about seven grams. Thornbills are super tricky to identify because they’re all tiny and brown. And on top of that, sometimes they like to hang out altogether in a big mixed flock feeding.
00:18:40 As a rain shower ends the birds still come out singing.
00:27:00 An eastern common froglet calling at the dam in the distance.
01:04:24 A superb fairy-wren comes and goes calling all the while.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of the forest coming to life early one morning near Canberra -- where the gum trees grow small and with twisting white trunks. In the twilight of the morning I creep out from under the covers to set up the microphones right next to a dam.
We are on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and not far away there are paddocks, livestock, a road and a farmhouse. But right here all there is, is nature waking up for the day.
Listen for the drops of dew falling from the gumtrees and onto the leaf-litter below.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
02:34, 04:50 and all through the recording, you can hear rosellas softly chattering to each other, their wing beats as they fly between trees, and the tiny clicks of them cracking open gumnuts to eat the softer seeds inside. They are probably crimson rosellas.
06:17 Australian magpies are the only birds in the world that carol like this.
08:15 Hear those wing beats? It's literally the sound of the air flowing over the feathers of bird wings. There are also black cockies calling in the distance just after this bird flies past.
15:26 This is the wing beat of a tiny bird, such as a thornbill or spinebill. It sounds like fluttering — "pfffffrt pfffffrt" — because they flap so fast each wing beat blurs into one shaky sound.
17:12 A wood duck calls from the dam, and sounds pretty happy with itself really (they always do). You can hear the duck's wings and also its feet on the water.
23:32 The rosellas continue their morning feast, and this is a particularly satisfying gumnut crack.
25:34 This is a rosella's flight call – a "sqwauk" that is often heard receding into the bush. Just ten seconds later, you hear the sweetest sound in the Australian bush – the piping, bell-like tings of the rosella's chiming call.
37:50 The "shhhhhhh" is the sound of a water-skiing wood duck.
40:49 Some small croaks from Crinia signifera – common eastern froglets. These are tiny little things, never getting bigger than 3cm, but their voice is mighty and carries a long way.
42:50 There is a bird having a bath on the edge of the dam.
47:00 The magpies really get going here and they are even joined by a kookaburra!
48:50 A sulphur-crested cockatoo does a flyby.
52:50 There are yellow-tailed black cockies in the distance as the magpies are singing their morning tunes.
1:01:15 A tiny bell-like repeating call of the eastern spinebill, a fetching tiny little bird with a long downward-curved bill for sipping nectar from flowers. Its call is one note, repeated and often getting faster as it goes. It's followed by magpie warbles and rosella chimes — then, a gust of wind pushes through the trees.
1:12:05 This is a white-throated tree creeper calling. It has special feet which enable it to grip onto a vertical surface, and it spends most of its time bouncing in an upwards direction around tree trunks looking for insects to eat.
1:15:40 You can hear a tiny bird, such as a scrubwren bouncing, alighting, flying and hunting in this section.
1:16:35 In the background there is the squeaky-toy beg of a juvenile sulphur-crested cockie, who manages to annoy its parents on both the exhale and inhale.
1:25:00 In this sequence, you can hear multiple magpies and how they sing together, because one is perched away from the microphones, and the other sounds like it's right on top of the microphone. The song is always started by the distant magpie, with the closer magpie joining in to finish the chorus.
1:31:54 The call of the yellow-faced honeyeater, which repeats throughout this whole recording.
1:32:24 The dew drops off the leaves fall onto the ground, and in this case, seem to occasionally hit something metallic!
1:32:40 A willy wagtail scolds in the background, as parrots nip open seeds and the magpie family goes through its repertoire of harmonica impressions.
1:36:38 The day is warming up, and the drips are dripping faster!
1:39:20 These very high pitched "ziiiits" are probably from thornbills, or … some other LBJ (Little Brown Job – birding-slang for a small brown species that is hard to identify).
1:40:50 There goes a wood duck!
1:42:10 The "chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck" call of a red wattlebird.
1:44:12 The little chatterbox call of the Australasian grebe, a tiny waterbird that loves dams like this, where there are areas of tall reeds with open water next door – the best of both worlds!
1:48:06 A rosella is chomping seeds and calling very close to the microphone here. You can hear the multi-tonal qualities of its voice.
1:51:57 Underneath a raucous sulphur-crested cockatoo call there is a sweet descending whistle of a white-throated gerygone (pronounced jeh-RIH-go-knee).
1:52:35 After the raucous cockies, this sounds like corellas chattering. They are both big white parrots, but the corellas do not have a crest, are smaller and have coloured skin around their eyes.
1:57:04 A black-faced cuckoo-shrike calls to its mate. This is a splendid little grey bird with a black mask, which is actually relatively common across all of Australia, though few people could recognise it. It's probably here in this patch of bushland because it borders farmland – they seem to like that semi-open sort of place to live.
1:59:00 The gerygone continues to call, along with a scolding willie wagtail and in the far distance, currawongs ring in the morning.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of the Roebuck Bay mudflats near Broome, WA. Hear the breeze across the water, crabs and mudskippers flipping and flopping, and a tide that slowly comes in. Roebuck Bay is on the traditional lands of the Yawuru people is one of the most magical places in Australia. It is a 34,119-hectare mudflat, washed every day by a tide that reaches kilometres from the shoreline. In the sapphire waters there are all sorts of sea turtles, saw fish and dugongs, and the red sands roll down to meet the water in a way that is absolutely unique to this area. It is a wetland of international significance, used every year by at least 300,000 shorebirds as a launching pad for their migration to the Northern Hemisphere.
This recording is on the edge of the clicks and snips of tiny mudskippers as they move around the mudflats at low tides is the constant white noise of nature. On the edge of the mudflats of Broome you hear a mix of shorebirds and passerines as well as the cicadas which buzz in waves as the wet builds up.
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No music, no voices, just the sound of a valley halfway up a Tasmanian mountain. This soundscape is full of birds and breeze echoing backwards and forwards across a reservoir. Kunyani is swirled with mist and the city of Hobart spreads below, in miniature, on a still, early morning.
We’re halfway up the mountain, at the Hobart Waterworks Reserve where two huge reservoirs store water for use by the populace below. The deep valley where the reservoirs are situated means there is an echoey, dream-like quality to all the sound. You can hear a unique mix of forest and water birds at this place every single morning.
There were tawny frogmouths coming as I trudged up the hill, and as I was sitting listening to the day unfold a scarlet robin danced on the edge of the bush — feeding, patrolling and, just maybe, calling for the microphone.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
06:06 A fan-tailed cuckoo calls, making a trilling, descending whistle, quavering slightly as it goes. This cuckoo is a parasitic breeder, sneakily laying its eggs into another bird's nest. The fan-tailed cuckoo in particular targets tiny birds, like scrubwrens, to bring up its offspring.
07:10 Kookaburras are not native to Tasmania, but were introduced in the early 20th century and are established.
12:51 The ploinking call is probably part of the call repertoire of the grey shrikethrush.
13:38 A single call of a green rosella. This bird is only found in Tasmania and is Australia’s largest rosella.
14:10 The repetitive notes of the striated pardalote, calling in almost perfectly timed beats.
19:52 The deep oooom of a bronzewing pigeon calling from the bushland. Often heard, rarely seen!
23:15 The kelp gulls, normally associated with the seaside, love to visit the reservoir. You can hear their calls echoing over the water and around the hills. They look like a big, beefy seagull with a black cape on, a bright yellow beak with a spot of red lipstick.
25:10 The footsteps of a jogger running past the microphone.
37:14 European blackbirds are singing throughout much of this recording. Released into Australia and well established in the colder areas, these songsters fill the air with a distinctive song. Think the beginning of Blackbird by The Beatles — it is, literally, a blackbird recording. Here they’re interspersed with native Australian birds, but it’s the one that sounds like an old man whistling an unknown tune.
38:20 Listen for the flight calls of the green rosellas.
40:10 Behind the grey shrikethrush and the blackbird, there are tiny chirps and a sequence of extremely high-pitched twitters, like a sea shanty sung in super-fast motion. This is the grey fantail, who will be flitting and flying through the dappled sunlight catching insects on the wing.
41:07 This slightly grumpy sounding quack is probably a pacific black duck.
49:32 The grey shrikethrush sings with clarity and force, and all across Australia its call varies slightly.
55:30 The kookaburras are still solidifying the boundaries of their territories and their relationships by singing choruses across the other side of the reservoir.
56:36 A coot doing its harmonic squawk.
1:15:34 The alarm call of the blackbird, who has momentarily stopped singing to warn of danger.
1:24:18 You can hear a masked lapwing become upset and take off, calling and swirling in the air.
1:28:34 A short interlude from distant ravens. These are forest ravens, the only sort that can be found in Tasmania.
1:29:15 A duck is chattering away in the background. I think it’s a wood duck! Quack!
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No music, no voices, just the sound of a gentle stream and frogs calling on a still, cool night in regional Victoria.
Moonlight floods the landscape of Wadawurrung country. Big, old candlebarks stand still and silent and a creek flows through a shallow valley. Grasses grow up to the waist, except where kangaroos have been nibbling them! And within the sedges by the creek lurk frogs who revel in the still night, the cold air and the perfect opportunity to sing for a mate.
It's hard to hear many of the other sounds above the water flowing and the frogs, but there are actually many creatures in this recording if you've got very good ears and time to listen hard.
Listening notes from Ann Jones:
01:50 Common eastern froglet with a "creaky-creaky-creaky" call. Don't let the name fool you — these are tiny frogs, with a maximum size of 3cm. The best way to see them is to wait until night and use a torch to try and see tiny little eyes on the edge of the water. They will appear in almost any habitat really, they're not too picky and will probably breed at any time of year also.
24:00 The brown tree frogs are calling. These are medium frogs – that means they'll only get up to about 4.5cm. It's a pretty common little frog throughout the south-eastern part of the mainland – and will be heard in natural areas, farms and even in town! They'll call at basically any time of year.
25:42 A female powerful owl is calling in the distance. This is Australia's largest owl, and the female's call is ringing out across her territory.
38:48 A female fox is calling in a characteristic scream/cough, though it's very faint with all the rowdy frogs. She's advertising her presence to other foxes, and who knows if she got a response. She did set distant dogs off barking though! These dogs bark on and off throughout this whole recording. Their voices really carry – I think they were well over a kilometre away. You can just hear their lower tones floating underneath the close water and frog sound.
44:27 A possum in a tree being rowdy as it cullumps through the branches.
51:20 Sugar gliders are nearby, chirping out their little barks. And also…. if you listen closely, you can hear a launch, silence while she glides, and a landing. To be fair though, this could be a ringtail in the tree, as shortly after the noises, a ringtail starts calling. Possibly more likely to be a ringtail, they're more clumsy.
52:05 The ringtail sounds like an extremely high-frequency horse's whinny. They almost sound like insects. They have a prehensile tail, meaning they use it to grip branches, or to carry things, like bunches of leaves back to their hollows. The ringtails in Victoria are, I think, much cuter than the ringtails further north. Gauntlet thrown.
1:34:45 I think this sharp, strong insect sound is possibly a katydid.
2:12:40 You can hear the scolding, throat-clearing calls of the brush-tailed possums. There are several through this recording and they also move through trees, in a very characteristically noisy way throughout the soundscape. If you hear rustling, it's likely a possum looting a tree.
2:38:10 This is one of those breaks, where all the frogs just decide, through some cue, to stop calling all at once in an area. Then, one will start up — and it all kicks off again.
