Wind Is the Original Radio

Hello and welcome back to Artist Talks! We have been longing for this return and are so happy to kick-start this new phase with David de la Haye, an award-winning ecological sound artist focusing on underwater aquatic environments.

An uncanny and down-to-earth fun conversation about listening to underwater sounds and the fascinating experience of recording them, creation of music with others from his field recordings and some necessary gear talk.

David is a musician - a bassist, composer and technician - which informs his work and collaborative processes with other musicians. He shares about how this processes go for some of his latest projects and the value of gathering people to make music.

Learn more about David and his work on his website, https://daviddelahaye.co.uk/,and consider supporting him on bandcamp: https://daviddelahaye.bandcamp.com/.

Recorded in the misty montane rainforest of Gunung Halimun National Park, this recording features subtle birdsong and the sounds of a distant mountain river. This location is one of the last truly wild places on the island of Java and home to a host of unique wildlife.

Recorded by Marc Anderson at the Gunung Halimun National Park, Java, Indonesia

A place dominated and overseen by large feathered creatures, acrobatic corvids and smaller virtuosos. Nearer the ground, the arched-formations of rock provide a refuge to others, from doves with their splashing wing beat sounds to mammals like red foxes, whose sounds are amplified and travel like an upwards spiral.

This amplification serves as a delicacy to my ears, bringing closer to my perception many tiny movements, many of which are hair-raising. Maybe it's merely the darkness operating its dominating power over us or perhaps it's this intriguing dance between near-silence and the appearance of nocturnal creatures - both animals and rocks, for the latter feel alive on their own.

The easily heard species in this recording are the tawny owl (Strix aluco) and the Griffon Vulture (Gyps fulvus).

This is a specially quiet recording, so an equally quiet listening is recommended.

Recorded by Melissa Pons in Spain.

The breeze bring some freshness in the evening during the hottest month of the year. This is the time when wildlife gets out of the hides to feed.

Recorded by Sounding Wild in Outamba Kilimi NP, Sierra Leone

Taman Negara is a large area of protected rainforest on the heart of the Malaysian peninsula and home to an abundance of wildlife including tigers, leopards and elephants. This recording features the sounds of a myriad of insects calling from deep in the forest at night.

Recorded by Marc Anderson in Taman Negara, Malasya

Spring in the Pacific Northwest is typically a damp rainy season. Snowmelt from the Cascade mountains and frequent cloud cover causes streams, and rivulets to pop up along mountainsides swelling the rivers in the valleys. This particular valley, like many in the western cascade range, has many small marshy areas surrounded by tall evergreen trees. By April the nights are filled with sounds of the Cascades Frog and a persistent white noise from nearby flowing water. Lengthening days, a dawn chorus starts early and quiets down as a rain shower approaches.

This region of Washington is the ancestral lands of the Stillaguamish People.

Recorded by Nick McMahan, Washington, USA

I have a tradition of recording for the week around Summer Solstice every year. The long days and extended twilights draw out the liveliest and most expressive Dawn Choruses of the season. This year I’m in Sinlahekin Valley in Washington State’s Okanogan High Country. It’s a deep, long scar on the ground gouged and left behind by retreating arms of the Cordilleran Ice Sheets of the last several glaciated ice ages. Arid steppes on one side, fir-covered mountains on the other, the Valley draws a line that separates two of the major ecological regions in our State. Running much of the length of the Valley is Sinlahekin Creek, a meandering, beaver-controlled system that sustains a narrow strip of wetlands and riparian borders favored by passing migratory birds. Deep enough to not sustain strong wind, the Valley is a valuable shelter, sometimes for passing birds to rest, sometimes to stay.

One of those birds is the Yellow-breasted Chat, a laconic-yet-vociferous songbird with a voice both louder and deeper than belies its small size. One of the more enigmatic songbirds of North America, the Yellow-breasted Chat is widespread across the continent but rarely found in dense numbers. It skulks about in dense riparian thickets and other shrubby habitats, nesting deep within and singing from a barely-exposed perch. More often heard than seen in late Spring and early Summer, when males produce long soliloquies in search for a mate (or sometimes two), they have a brief but explosively creative burst of song every year, only to remain silent for the rest of it.

Recorded on Summer Solstice, 2024, this particular singer was a surprise. I had been hiking around one of my favorite valley campgrounds, enjoying the recent explosion of late-Spring songbirds, when I noticed a thicket that was particularly favored by local Lazuli Buntings. Nice Bunting recordings being a goal of this trip, I quickly set up a lightweight hiking recorder with a pair of small mics to leave overnight in hopes that Buntings could have time to sing as they saw fit.

Imagine my surprise when listening back to the recordings and found more than an hours’ worth of a Yellow-breasted Chat singing close by, as if I’d set these microphones up just for him!

Our Chat wakes up early in Nautical Twilight with a burst of whistles to rattle the neighborhood. After a brief rest, he begins his soliloquy of repeated grunts, rattles, beeps, and whistles. Soon, less than a minute later, the first distant songs of the next Chat over can be heard in the background. They space themselves out along the riparian border of Sinlahekin Creek just close enough to still be heard, far enough away to give each other space. While most birds sleep in and wait for more light, including Robins and Blackbirds, Nautical Twilight is their moment to sing.

For most of the next two hours this little bird will sing from the same perch, only occasionally shifting directions as if he wants to be sure everyone has an equal chance to hear his voice. His voice grows louder and softer as he turns toward or away from the microphones. He’s so close the early reflections off the leaves of the thicket scatter his voice back to us loud and clear even when he faces away. With almost mechanical precision he continues his steady chanting song.

As other birds awaken with the slowly breaking mountain dawn, the air fills with songs loud and soft behind — but never interfering with — the Chat. Soon there are cawing Crows, Black-capped Chickadees sweetly calling, “Phoee-be”, and Lazuli Buntings working out their unique and recently “crystalized” songs. A Veery sounds like a mournful flute the next hedge over. A Ruffed Grouse beats its wings with an almost too-low-to-hear “flah-thump”. Yellow Warblers, Red-eyed Vireos, Common Yellowthroats, and Spotted Towhees circle the neighborhood, calling from one tree, singing from another, never satisfied, at least not until Sunrise when everyone will disperse to live out their day foraging for meals and nesting material. Filling out the soundscape are Cedar Waxwings, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Pied-billed Grebes, Pine Siskins, rowdy gangs of teenaged Red-winged Blackbirds, and more.

After Sunrise the avian community slowly disperses. The Dawn Chorus is no more, replaced in whole by daily activities. Song continues as part of that organizing behavior, but the Dawn pronouncements are over after nearly 2 hours of upwelling joy. Our chat slowly moves farther and farther from his perch, allowing daring Buntings and Towhees the chance to take over the job of songmeister. If we were to keep listening throughout the day, we’d hear the Yellow Chat come and go, ensuring his perch and his home remain his and his alone. At night he will reverse the process, singing from Sunset to Astronomical Twilight, no so much fading away but just stopping when it’s time to fall asleep, to gain back some of that spent energy to do it all again tomorrow.

Recorded by Andy Martin in Okanogan High Country, USA

Recorded in the Spring of 2022, this soundscape has all the indicators of a warm day: pollinators, a variety of crickets, occasional frogs and a rich multi-layered display of bird song.

It's one of the quietest places I know, allowing an equally quiet observer to listen to all the layers and make up a sonorous composition of this place weaving it in one's imagination.

These are the most prevalent bird species one can hear in this recording:

Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix), Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus), Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupidae), Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra), Little Owl (Athene noctua).

The Montado is an unique system, existing only in the Iberian Peninsula although slightly different from the Dehesa, in Spain. As far as we know, human intervention has started during the neolithic period, favouring certain trees for their high yielding fruits that feed the animals, and others for their cork.

Despite such intricate connection and millennial relationship, the Montado is in decline; this system is incredibly fragile and faces a number of grave threats today, from diseases that affect trees and wild rabbits to overgrazing, to privatization of enormous areas of land for mono-crop exploitation, leaving the soil impoverished and triggering the increase of chemical use, which will then infiltrate underground.

Thus it is imperative and urgent to take care of this emblematic land.

You can hear the tide slowly approaching in the distance, with activity from all sort of birds in this patch of green in one of the busiest islands of the Bijagos Archipelago.

Recorded by Sounding Wild in the Bijagos Archipelago, Guinea-Bissau

Afternoon ambience from bushland in the New England tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. A light breeze blows through the canopy of the eucalyptus woodland and in the background, birdsong drifts on the cool mountain air.

Recording by Marc Anderson at the Mummel Gulf National Park, NSW, Australia