Viewing entries tagged
Noise-pollution

Spring Warmth

Everybody has their own cue’s for spring, something they look out for each year, whether it’s the first arriving Swallows, the sound of the dawn chorus, the smell of wild Garlic, or a pond full of Frogspawn. I haven’t got any specific thing I love seeing the most as I love it all! but if I had to choose, it has to be the singing birds. I get so much joy listening to birdsong, whether it’s the complex song of the Skylark on the hills or the repetitive song of a Dunnock in the Garden. With heat, comes energy, and that energy is contagious, so lap every moment up.

One sign for sure is emerging Reptiles and this week I found my first Adder in a known hotspot. I’m tasking myself to find more local ones this year as I’ve walked for miles in pristine habitat on my local moorland and I’m still yet to find one.

In the same spot as the Adder were 7 Common Lizard, all basking in the warm sun. Hard to believe that same day started with ground frost and snow forecast! March has become a very unpredictable month which has the potential to make or break it for some species that time things wrongly.

Adding to the Bird song list is this Chaffinch on a rather windy day and a beautiful Dunnock which continued to sing in the tree I just parked my car under, even after making a racket shutting doors and getting all my recording gear out of the boot. It’s a nice feeling when wildlife choses to trust you, or most likely pretending you don’t exist lol.

Below is one of my favourite recordings to date on what ended up being a beautiful walk in the Forest of Dean. A pair of Ravens were building a couple of nests, probably undecided on where to settle, but the morning mist was condensing on the trees, creating a background of crisp water drops falling on dead leaves. My recording doesn’t do it justice really but if you listen with a good pair of headphones you will hear it. One thing I couldn’t help but hear also though is the passing planes!! There literally is no escaping the sound of man anymore.

Take a look at this time-lapse video of all the plane activity in Europe. It’s getting ridiculous! A total money pit and all at the expense of the earth. It’s important we find areas to escape man made sounds and I highly recommend finding an area to escape this constant drone. The Canyon in Pantegaseg can be a great place to escape plane noise, but it’s also a hotspot for off-road vehicles on the weekends, so pick your times carefully. The best way to get away from these sounds are to find natural sounds that drown it out, this is why we’re drawn to the sounds of streams and rivers.

Before the Rain

Spring might have been a wet one, but it’s been great so far this summer for bugs. I usually turn my attention to bugs this time of year as some species have a small window of opportunity before they all disappear again till next year. If you like Grasshoppers and Crickets, it’s worth visiting the north side of Llandegfedd as the meadows are alive with Roesel’s, Dark, Oak & Speckled Bush-crickets, Green, Meadow, Field and Mottled Grasshoppers, Long & Short-winged Coneheads and even Ground Hoppers with more to discover I’m sure.
As you know I like to record the sounds of nature, but as many people cannot hear some species of Grasshopper as they’re too high pitched, I’ve started a project that aims to record as many different species of Grasshopper / Cricket as possible and to slow those recordings down so that you can listen to the finer detail of each and every stroke of the wing cases. It’s not for everyone, but i find stuff like this fascinating as it reveals frequencies that you wouldn’t otherwise hear. Listen back to these insects in slow-motion helps you enter their world for a moment and also highlights how important it is for us to start consider the environmental impact our noise pollution has on species that are dependant on sound in order to reproduce.

I tend not to go anywhere simply for the walk these days, partly because I can’t walk far at the moment as I have gall-stones that are playing havoc, but also because I only walk 2 minutes before spotting something interesting to photograph, record or just appreciate. It doesn’t do anything for my fitness levels this way but I’ve made so much luck this way, slowly walking through the landscape, trying to appreciate everything that I see. If you do this, you’ll be rewarded more and more, and this was evident when I was accompanied by a Stoat that was quite shy, but I would have easily missed it if I was walking with the intent to walk. If you want to see things, you need to slow right down.

Forgotten Silence

I’ll start this blog with a picture from yesterday female ‘Lichen’ who has just a week left before her eggs hatch. She’s been a great mother so far, sitting in this horrific wet weather. I’ve kept an eye on her as I honestly thought that the ditch she was in would fill with water but luckily it hasn’t. I should have more faith in her nest location choice, they clearly know what they’re doing. 

Female Nightjar - Lichen

Female Nightjar - Lichen

I’ve spent more time sound recording this year than I have taking photo’s, but it’s mainly been for research rather than creating presentable audio. Listening to the world through an amplified microphone, does have two different affects on me. It mainly helps me focus on isolated sounds, focusing my brain on one thing which helps drown out noise-pollution. It can also however make you more aware of noise, as when the bird stops singing, all you’re left with is the sounds of over-head planes, distant traffic, or the roaring sound of off-road motorbikes. Finding locations that are noise-free in Gwent, is becoming near impossible. Is there any wonder that the world is suffering from the highest number of depression cases ever recorded?

A lack of understanding from the governments of the world regarding sound-pollution is mostly because ‘sound’ for them is some unquantifiable measure of consequences that cannot be contained.

This is so far from the truth! We need to approached the subject in a different manner and a start would be to recognise sound for what it really is, and that is Pressure.
No matter what the sound is, big or small, we receive that sound via pressure to our ears drums, and that pressure signal is interpreted by the brain. Our brains work so hard to filter out bad sound pressure, but it’s a battle we’re going to lose. This is why thousands like me escape to the countryside, to try and experience natures gift of silence. In many places we’ve lost it already, but it’s not too late.

There have been some huge milestones recently in the fight against noise-pollution - https://us.whales.org/2018/07/03/noise-pollution-chronically-stresses-whales-and-dolphins/
Marine scientists have been studying Whale sounds for decades and with thousands of Whales washing up on our beaches every year, finally it was proven that military-sonar was the cause. Sound travels much further under water, and as a result, much of our marine life has evolutionary adaptations to exploit this

While it’s a good thing that the world is being forced to think about air and water pollution, we also need to fight the corner for noise and light pollution too. We need protected zones all around the globe where traffic is diverted so we can minimise our impact on natural silence. Hopefully one day we’ll have silent zones close to home that are protected also but for now, it’s my goal to seek these locations out for my own mental health.

This video is a couple years old now, but please watch it. It highlights many of the things I’ve mentioned.