Nature Sounds

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.

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!

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.