Nature Sounds

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 from 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 a spider’s 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.

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.

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.