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22 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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A rainy night with owls beside a waterhole in the desert
4 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 40 min
SOUNDS LIKE: The pressure release of rain drops hitting parched red sand after a sweltering day and possibly the best owl recording that Ann has ever taken. Lees meer
CONTAINS: Patches of rain, and distant frogs happy with the rain, kingfishers with insomnia. And a spectacular territorial display from barking owls.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Lovers of weather, of romance and whimsy, and also of birds-which-sound-like-they're-anything-but-birds enthusiasts.
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
This is an incredibly dramatic place — and a special place in Yinjibarndi lore. It definitely has that gravitas. The water is surrounded in part by dark red, iron-filled cliff faces, cool grey-blue spinifex clumps and immense river red gums right at the water's edge.
Even in the middle of the night, and even when it is raining enough to form puddles on the sand, the waterholes of arid Australia are centres of activity. So, although the landscape is all red sand and rocks, spinifex and heat haze, beside this spring-fed waterhole at Millstream Chichester National Park in the Pilbara in WA, it is pure, cool air.
The water in this pool is so deep and cool that it gives you goosebumps if you jump in, even when it's 40 degrees in the shade.
And the string of waterholes here are home to huge Pilbara Olive Pythons , which grow up to 4m long and can stay motionless for days on end waiting for the perfect meal to come too close. They can eat a whole rock wallaby in a sitting.
Maybe they're the ones responsible for some of the quiet movements in this recording (which is, side note, possibly one of the most wonderfully surprising recordings I have ever taken).
Not one, not two, not three but MORE nocturnal bird species all making themselves known between the rain patches. Magic.
From the lands of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people listen to raindrops hit dusty surfaces.
00:00:00 Hear the rain pattering on the water, and the occasional 'tong' as a drop hits the microphone or a branch of the tree the micropho…
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Soothing, soft wind through trees in a peaceful desert
4 augustus 2026 · 2 uur 54 min
SOUNDS LIKE: Laying in a hammock, your eyes closed, no-one for 500km, surrounded by red sand, listening to the wind in trees that've been around since the dinosaurs. Perfect conditions for a nap. Lees meer
Sometimes, you just need to a bit of silence. Of course, nature is rarely silent. She's even better than that. She's better than ANY noise machine a human has ever invented.
Let the sound of wind through needle-leaves on Akerre Country lull your worries away.
CONTAINS: Wind. Quiet. Zebra finches. Budgies. Mysterious rustling of small critters.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of gentle soundscapes and wind in sheoaks, those who don't want machine white noise but need to put a baby to sleep.
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
I have a weatherproof recorder that I can stick out in almost any conditions and in this case I attached it to what has been called 'Australia's loneliest tree' in the Simpson Desert.
To get there from Alice Springs, you travel through dune country, past ridges and through dry creek beds. And then all of a sudden a loose grove of skinny pine trees peak over the horizon. It is one of only two patches of Acacia peuce in the entire world. They're on opposite sides of the same desert and they're called lonely because they are solitary trees in an otherwise treeless landscape.
It's also known as waddi waddi, or maybe Birdsville wattle and this stand is on Akerre Country.
It is one of the rarest plants in the world and the wind through the needle-like leaves sounds gorgeous.
This recording was taken while I was on site in the Simpson Desert, NT filming for Australia's Favourite Tree.
We camped right near the Mac Clarke Reserve. And this is what I listened to all night.
00:00 I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere in Australia where there wasn't a cricket calling.
03:39 Zebra finches popular in aviaries worldwide but a native bird here in arid Australia, and for me they're one of the sounds that lets me know I'm somewhere arid.
08:12 They sound like desert fairy wings…
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Peaceful soundscape of soft ocean waves in a sandy bay
4 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 16 min
SOUNDS LIKE: The 'shhhh' sound that tropical dreams are made of as gentle waves roll through mangrove trees on an island paradise. It's hushed and peaceful. Lees meer
CONTAINS: Soft waves, and salt water moving quite continuously. Quiet insects throughout. The sounds occupy different frequencies and rhythms so they can all be heard clearly even when they're all calling. Listen for high pitched maraca-like single shakes, rickety-whirring phrases, tiny yaps marking a beat, or what sounds like a tiny mobile phone calling somewhere around 9khz.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of quiet white noise, waves and water sounds. Or those who like blocking out noisy colleagues by putting on outrageously large headphones and listening to the ocean instead.
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
This place is White Lotus meets scientific research. At the Orpheus Island Research Station, the island is skirted by bright white sand, its steep hills covered in green vegetation, but rather than pleasure craft, it's practical research vessels anchored in the bay.
Located in the Palm Islands on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, the Research Station is the sort of place that needs a dive shed (for all the gear), plus a fire pit (for evenings becoming mosquito food donors) and a wary eye (for the huge goanna that keeps on patrolling the shoreline).
I was visiting to film for Dr Ann's Secret Lives: bull sharks.
But this recording is not of the hectic process of catching a 200kg shark.
Instead, this is from the mainland-facing side of Goolboodi, AKA Orpheus Island, in the sea country of the Manbarra people about 110km north of Townsville.
The inlet is shallow, with a sweeping mudflat exposed at low tide, and epic mangrove trees around the edge. They're shaped like the 'tree of life' with roots spanning tens of metres and canopies to match, and the waves are forced to move through the roots, backwards and forwards, all night.
The recorder is attached to one of those trees — and its roots split the waves i…
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Nature's white noise — thousands of humming insects and a soothing rufous owl
4 augustus 2026 · 2 uur 20 min
CONTAINS: A consistent insect chorus with a rufous owl calling intermittently throughout. Lees meer
RECOMMENDED FOR: Those who like white noise, brown noise, pink noise. For people who want a consistent soundscape to help mask the sounds of the city, who want something almost mechanical or synthesised to help drown their thoughts.
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
Subtle pulsations, and vibrations, with ticking, buzzing and swooshing that forms soft waves of white noise. It is the insect chorus in rainforest in Cape York, QLD.
This recording was taken in the area under the care of Mapoon Aboriginal Council, next to a tidal river with mangroves in a patch of forest that is dense with life.
There are crickets and katydids calling and probably a large range of other things that I'll never be able to identify.
00:01:20 An orange-footed scrubfowl is calling in the distance.
00:08:40 The clicks and snaps of movement. Also, of things falling from trees — perhaps discarded seeds by animals, leaves, or fruit.
00:15:00 A brush cuckoo calling.
00:15:50 The scream is a Tyto — either a Barn Owl or a Grass Owl. The calls are rather too similar to tell them apart.
00:24:00 The metal 'sproing' call of a large-tailed nightjar — a bird which looks like leaf litter, but sounds like an industrial accident.
00:33:45 The bounding thumps of a macropod.
00:46:30 Now, at first I thought… frogmouth? What is that. But then I roped in my friend Dr Jodi Rowley, who then had to call in a second opinion. AND… drum roll — it is Litoria infrafrenata the white-lipped tree frog. Jodi says it's sort of unusual to hear its calls grouped together like that.
00:53:30 An Eastern Koel calling. I wonder if they ever get any sleep. It seems that they turn up everywhere I record, no matter the time!
00:55:30 That is the call of a rufous owl — a large nocturnal owl who looks a little like it is wearing a stripy 'Where's Wally' top in cream and orange. It also has a much milder resting 'expression' that the powerfu…
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Birds in paradise — a rainforest nature soundscape from Australia
4 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 30 min
SOUNDS LIKE: You're waking up while on holiday in a tropical rainforest, surrounded by exotic birds. Layers of sound are like vine tendrils curling through the jungle canopy: the birds are near, far, above and right next to you. Let them drown out whatever is giving you the sh*ts. Lees meer
In reality, this place in Cape York isn't really visited by tourists. It's one of those spots that the locals from Mapoon Aboriginal Shire Council in Far North Queensland know about.
CONTAINS: Mostly birbs. And a curious wallaroo later on.You'll hear green orioles, which sound like someone dropping PVC pipes, orange-footed scrubfowl which call out like an old lady (a posh one) getting a fright and even one of Australia's rarest birds, the palm cockatoo. Minimal flies and mozzies.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Those who wish they could travel to every corner of the globe, for when you need something a bit louder to drown out some neighbours, or your thoughts. For bird people (and those who wish they were bird people).
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
There is a 4WD track in western Cape York that leads from the highway towards a tidal river filled with crocs and sharks. Just as you're about to hit the high tide mark - that's where this recording is taken.
It is 'riparian forest' which is the fancy way of saying it's forest on a riverbank. In this part of the world, it means thick vegetation with vines growing throughout, the foliage providing shade from the blasting sun, but also keeping the humidity high.
There are rare (in Australia) Nypa Palms emerging from muddy water or even at the mangroves edge and let's face it, something that could bite you is never more than 30cm away.
This is one of those recordings where there's so much going on, I almost don't know where to start when explaining what I can hear.
00:00:00 A dawn chorus, though, if you listen very carefully there is a cross over of some nocturnal birds. The large-tailed nightjar sounds like a metal spring being repeatedly bounced. Boing boi…
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A cold, crisp night, a high-country river and a whole lot of wombat
4 augustus 2026 · 55 min
SOUNDS LIKE: You have eschewed modern life and joined your new BFF — a wombat — to live a life of naps, snacks and cute attacks. Lees meer
CONTAINS: A clear, cold night and the wombats are stirring, stomping, scratching and most of all, crunching their way through about 2kgs of grass. Nearby, the wombat's neighbours undertake nocturnal shenanigans and no-one seems to get any sleep. Except you. There are birds which should be awake, birds which should be asleep, possums and the star of the show — the bare-nosed wombats.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Explorers and the curious, those who want to feel awe and joy at discovering secrets that nature holds close to her chest.
ANN'S NERDY SOUND NOTES:
I didn't set out to record wombats. But when I went out one evening on Ngunnawal Country in the ACT, I stumbled upon an area that was almost as if it'd been exploded from below - there were holes and dirt EVERYWHERE.
And I know a wombat poo when I see one -> 🟫 <-
So, I found an active burrow entrance, with some grass nearby (that I thought could be quite delicious to a wombat) and attached the recorder at stumpy-little-hairy-leg height.
The Murrumbidgee River is flowing about 10 metres away. Its banks are lined by big old eucalypts and a fair amount of scratchy vegetation (ask me how I know.)
Bare-nosed (or common) wombats do lots of scratching. Lots of eating. A bit of bulldozing through things, maybe a fight. And that's just one night!
00:01:30 Boobook calls. And in the distance, almost imperceptibly to the human ear in this recording, another answer.
00:01:50 A micro bat flies past - you can hear a series of extremely high pitched 'pips' that doppler.
00:03:10 A bat feeding buzz - the echo location calls are much, much closer together as it zeros in on its prey. And no, I have no idea what the wood ducks are going on about.
00:04:08 Wood ducks like to roost in trees, nest in hollows, and sometimes, make noises like cats. You can hear the ducks roosting in different parts across the r…
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Where there is water
20 september 2022
No music. No voices. Just the sound of a creek bed in outback Australia. Lees meer
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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The storm front
13 september 2022
No music, no human voices. Just the sound of an epic summer storm rolling on through the evening. Lees meer
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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Sounds like camping
5 september 2022
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. Lees meer
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, the…
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Quiet shoreline at sunset
29 augustus 2022
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? Lees meer
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 voraciou…
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An hour before dawn in arid WA
23 augustus 2022
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. Lees meer
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 th…
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Life in a forest of giants
16 augustus 2022
No music, no voices. Just the sound of the mountain ash forest, recorded by the ABC's Dr Ann Jones. Lees meer
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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Heavy rain and desert thunder
16 augustus 2021 · 1 uur
No music, no talking, just the sound of a rain storm in the desert. Lees meer
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 diagnosti…
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Dawn at the creek
12 augustus 2021 · 1 uur 30 min
No music, no voices, just imagine you’re camping beside a creek in early spring. Lees meer
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…
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Midnight frog chorus
9 augustus 2021 · 1 uur 9 min
No music, no voices, just the sound of night time at a swamp on Wadawarrung Country in Victoria. Lees meer
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. Wit…
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Lyrebird songs in a Gippsland rainforest
5 augustus 2021 · 1 uur 36 min
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. Lees meer
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’…
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Carolling magpies in Western Australia
2 augustus 2021 · 1 uur
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. Lees meer
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.
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Gentle rain on a tin roof in the outback
29 juli 2021 · 1 uur 30 min
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: Lees meer
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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Peaceful morning forest songs
22 juli 2021 · 2 uur
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. Lees meer
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 bi…
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Relaxing birdsong by the ocean
21 juli 2021 · 2 uur 30 min
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. Lees meer
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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Dawn chorus in the mountains
20 juli 2021 · 1 uur 30 min
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. Lees meer
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 …
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Calm, flowing creek with night-time frog calls
19 juli 2021 · 2 uur 58 min
No music, no voices, just the sound of a gentle stream and frogs calling on a still, cool night in regional Victoria. Lees meer
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 …