Night Choruses | The Music of Nature

Off to New England

by Lang Elliott · October 25, 2012 · 12 Comments

We’re off to New England … New England National Park that is … where we will be participating in a survey for breeding frogs (see below for map showing park’s whereabouts in relation to Newcastle). My personal goal while there is to record the deep croaking of the rare Sphagnum Frog (Philoria sphagnicolus) that lives in high altitude beech forest.

We leave early tomorrow morning (the park is a six hour drive north) and I doubt if I’ll be able to blog during our trip because we won’t have internet up there. So, until my return late next week, feast your ears on the following long recording that I made last night in the Watagan Mountains south of Newcastle, a pleasing zen-infused mix of sounds:

From dusk to darkness at a small stream in the Watagan Mountains near Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Features Kookaburras, two species of frogs, and the Southern Boobook Owl. 24 October 2012. Recording © Lang Elliott.

The recording features Kookaburras sounding off as darkness descends, set against the sounds of two frogs. The high-pitched crackling notes are made by the Green Stream Frog (Litoria phyllochroa). The low-pitched croaks are made by one of Australia’s largest frogs, the Giant Barred Frog (Mixophyes iteratas).

About halfway through this 9-minute recording, a Southern Boobook Owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae) begins calling. Also referred to as Mopoke, both common names refer to its distinctive two-parted calls. The Boobook is Australias smallest owl and is common in the Watagan Mountains just south of Newcastle. It would be difficult to find a spot in the forest where they will not be heard.

Maybe I’ll pick up a new owl or two in New England National Park, though I’ll be quite happy indeed to snag the croaks of the Sphagnum Frog, which has surely captured my imagination.

Song of the Reeds

by Lang Elliott · October 19, 2012 · 10 Comments

Yesterday evening, I sat quietly next to a marshy pond full of reeds. It was dead-calm and the marsh came alive with sound as darkness descended.

Soundscape from a reedy pond featuring an Australian Reed Warbler. Recorded at dusk 19 October 2012 along the western edge of the Watagan Mountains near Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. © Lang Elliott.

The clattering of frogs (species unknown) provide a continuous backdrop against which a variety of bird sounds can be heard, as the birds settle-in for the night. Listen for the bell-like tink notes of Bell Miners (featured in my previous blog post), along with soft plaintive whines made by some other bird, which one I do not know. Listen also for trilling tree crickets and the high-pitched buzzes of meadow katydids (long-horned grasshoppers).

But the main songster in the chorus is a very common inhabitant of reed-edged ponds, the Australian Sedge Warbler (Acrocephalus australis), a dull brown bird whose rich and varied songs add brilliance to the dusk chorus. The warbler sang from many different perches and usually was invisible to me, but at times I caught glimpses of him singing from tall perches in the rapidly-dimming light.

They say there is a sedge warbler in every patch of reeds here in Australia, no matter how large or small. This patch was no exception, and I could even hear another sounding off from a much smaller marsh some distance behind me.

How lucky I was to find this remote spot, nestled against the base of the Watagan Mountains at the end of a long and narrow valley. Though cows and horses were near, they said not a word and I was blessed to experience the pure voices of nature springing forth from the reedy pool, well out of range of the telltale sounds of humankind.

NOTE: Please don’t play too loud; adjust volume so that the reed warbler is at a pleasant level. And listen with headphones or earbuds if possible, so that you experience the full dimensional effect … my soundscapes are meant to convey the stunning poetry of natural sound, so it is imperative to listen correctly.

Queensland Night Singers

by Lang Elliott · September 28, 2012 · 15 Comments

We flew into Cairns in Queensland a week ago and I hit the ground running. I’ve spent nearly every “day” recording in the wee hours of the night as well as pre-dawn and dawn, either in the Kuranda National Park just northwest of Cairns or else in Daintree National Park farther to the north.

Sleep has been sporadic at best, mostly me laying flat on the ground along a road or trail in the wet tropical forest, attempting sleep, until I hear something of interest … at which time I jump into action, grabbing my recorder and mike, and heading swiftly in the direction of my quarry. Luckily, it has been dry and there are very few mosquitoes here and few crawling bugs. Sure, poisonous snakes abound, but they’ve gratefully left me alone. Nights in the forest have been magical, a dreamland unto itself.

I have many, many recordings to share, but too little time to process them and upload them to my blog. Hopefully that will change next week when we fly down to Brisbane and set up our “base camp” for Carl’s frog research. No, not an actual field camp, but I think a hotel near Newcastle. Then, each night, we’ll drive into the surrounding New England Mountains in search of frogs. It is likely that I will rent my own car, so that I can stay in the mountains through the night, in order to gather soundscapes during the magic hours when the earth delivers the most exciting and mesmerizing compositions.

Below is a recording that came as a complete surprise. I got it my very first night out in Kuranda National Park. Unfamiliar birds near my sleep-spot repeatedly erupted with sound in the middle of the night, their calls reverberating through the forest. It was splendid to hear their melodious cries and have no idea whatsoever what I was hearing. Some minutes later, another night-singer erupted with a captivating whistled melody, probably delivered in flight, that echoed forever into the night:

Mysterious creatures of the night, sounding off in the Kuranda National Park northwest of Cairns in Queensland, Australia. 21 September 2012, 2:00 am-ish.

Only later did the folks here at the Cassowary House tell me the singers were the Orange-footed Scrubfowl and the Bush Stone-curlew … commonplace critters of the tropical forest in Queensland. But their names and the fact that both species are common really didn’t matter to me. I experienced their “forms” as pure, reverberant sound, products of mysterious creatures of the night, voicing their dreams across a landscape unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Screeches in the Night

by Lang Elliott · September 17, 2012 · 22 Comments

The first leg of my Australia trip involved driving from my hometown of Ithaca, New York to Columbia, Missouri, where Carl Gerhardt, my co-traveler lives. His home is on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. I arrived yesterday evening and immediately noticed that it was dead-calm. So when darkness fell I walked the ridge trail to a small clearing in the woods, hoping to record the mellow insect chorus. But as I approached the clearing, I became aware of periodic screeches given by two mysterious creatures of the night, one fairly near and the other much farther away.

Excited to get a recording, I quickly placed my soundscape microphone at the edge of the clearing, a hundred feet or so from the nearest screecher. I turned the recorder on, left it sitting on the ground, and then moved back in the woods where I sat on a log and enjoyed the spectacle. How exciting, but “who” or “what” is making these unusual sounds?

Mysterious screeches in the night, set against a cricket and katydid chorus, 16 September 2012, 11:00 pm, near Columbia, Missouri. (don’t play too loud or the insects will overwhelm).

Someone new to nature’s night chorus might think these sounds are made by some kind of mammal. Or, if by a bird, they must be the screeches of a Screech-owl (that sure seems logical, doesn’t it?). Well, they are indeed made by owls, but not by screech-owls (which hardly ever make any sound approaching what we may call a screech) … these are the screeches of two young Barred or Great Horned Owls, I’m not entirely sure which.

Given the time of year, these are certainly not the calls of “baby” owls, but rather of immatures … adult-sized but still dependent on their parents for food. Such screeching sounds are generally thought to be “begging calls” or else “location calls” that allow the parent owls to find and feed the young.

But which species of owl is this? My initial impression was Barred Owl (at times, I could hear adults calling way off in the distance), but Carl says there are a lot of Great Horned Owls in the area. So I’m just not sure. Maybe someone out there can tell me how to tell the two apart, based entirely on the sound of the screeches of the immatures?

To my ear, this is a very pleasurable soundscape. The insects provide a continuous and reasonably mellow backdrop for the owl calls. And I love the distant caller, which adds depth to the recording. On the whole, I am very pleased to snag these mysterious voices of the night, only two days prior to our launch toward Australia.

Gentle Wills

by Lang Elliott · March 16, 2011 · 12 Comments

I’ve told this story time and again. I search through my collection of soundscape recordings that feature particular species and I am disappointed to find that most of the time I got too close, the recordings overpowering the average listener who prefers gentle soundscapes over striking closeups.

Such is the case with the Whip-poor-will. I’ve got tons of recordings but nearly all of them are up close. Nice, for sure, but too loud to listen to for long periods. I was beginning to think I didn’t have any really excellent immersive soundscape recordings of Whip-poor-wills, but then I stumbled across the following one that I made in mid-April of 1995 in Kentucky, shortly after the Whip-poor-wills had returned from migration. Take a listen . . . there are lots of birds involved, some perhaps just passing through:

Numerous Whip-poor-wills singing at night in hardwood forest surrounding a small marsh. 15 April 1995, Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky. Recorded by Lang Elliott.

Do you like this recording? It’s busy with Whip-poor-will’s but they are all at a distance and their songs are resonant, well-integrated into their environment. “Gentle Wills,” I have decided to call them because they are so darned easy on the ears! Listen also for the peeping of Spring Peepers, the chirps of Spring Field Crickets, the buzzy, high-pitched song of a Cone-headed Katydid, and water sounds from the marsh.

Peents and Booms

by Lang Elliott · March 11, 2011 · 14 Comments

photo of Common Nighthawk © Brian Small I love listening to nightjars of all types, their strange calls being among my favorite voices of the night. Who is not moved by the musical whistles of Whip-poor-wills, Chuck-will’s-widows, and Poorwills, the buzzy peents of Common Nighthawks, the toadlike trills of Lesser Nighthawks, and the nasal purr-weers of Common Parauques?

One of my all-time favorite nightjar recordings is one made by my friend Ted Mack. The date was May 17, 2006. Ted and I drove to a remote area in the Adirondacks, arriving at our destination at 4:30am. As soon as we got out of car, we heard a Common Nighthawk giving nasal peent calls and periodically diving and booming as Green Frogs and Spring Peepers sounded off from a nearby pond. Ted fumbled with his gear in the parking lot while I sprinted down the road in order to get under the calling bird. But as soon as I turned on my recorder, the bird shifted its activity to Ted’s position, and Ted raked in the gold:

Common Nighthawk peents and booms, 4:30am, 17 May 2006, Adirondack Mountains near Paul Smiths, NY. Recording by Ted Mack.

You may wonder how the nighthawk produces the loud, airy booms. These remarkable sounds occur as the male dives toward the ground and then pulls upward at the last moment, the sound being made by air rushing through the feathers of his wings. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

This recording is special because of the close proximity of the nighthawk, which circled and boomed above Ted for over five minutes. Usually, they come and go, giving a few calls and a boom from close by and then heading off into the distance, their calls becoming muffled and soft.

Do you like this recording? I had to do a little work on it to eliminate popping sounds made by Ted’s car as it cooled, and also to reduce some annoying high frequency hiss. I also toned-down a few of the loudest peents. Did I do okay? Does it sound good to you?

Hoots and Snorts

by Lang Elliott · March 10, 2011 · 11 Comments

Lots of folks say that owls fly so silently that their prey cannot hear them coming. Well, this may be true when they’re hunting, but on a quiet night, when an owl flies to a perch nearby, one can certainly hear the sounds of its wings.

The date is May 1, 1993. I am at Delta Marsh along the south shore of Lake Manitoba. It is the middle of the night and countless Wood Frogs cackle from a nearby marsh. I’ve placed my soundscape microphone in a forested patch near a Great Horned Owl nest, in hopes of getting some nice hoots. Just before midnight, an owl sounds off from about a hundred feet away. Then my attention goes to the subtle sounds of something moving around in the leaves, maybe a deer mouse or some other small mammal …

Hoots of a Great Horned Owl and snorts of a White-tailed Deer, 11:45pm, 1 May 1993, Delta Marsh, along the south shore of Lake Manitoba. Recording by Lang Elliott.

Holy smoke! That “little” mammal turned out to be one heck of a “BIG” mammal, a White-tailed Deer, who snorted and bounded away into the woods! I am amazed that he made so little noise as he approached. And how about the wing noise made by the Great Horned Owl, both as he flew in close and then flew away about a minute later? Pretty impressive, huh?

Note: As you may have noticed, as of late I’ve moved away from posting “easy listening” recordings in favor of recordings that portray significant sound events. They are still soundscapes, for sure, but more of the engaging type. I’m curious what you think of these recordings. Do you find them satisfying? Would you like to hear long samples, or should I strive to keep these kinds of recordings rather brief, on the order of two to four minutes in length? Let me know what you think!

Thousand Dollar Croaks

by Lang Elliott · March 5, 2011 · 12 Comments

What’s a ribbit, peep, or croak worth? For the sake of my sanity, I wouldn’t dare calculate the amount of money I’ve spent over twenty-five years, chasing after myriad frogs and toads, documenting their calls. But there is one rather unusual frog that I will account for here, a remarkable amphibian that eluded me for years—the timid Crawfish Frog, a chunky, dark-spotted species named for its habit of taking refuge in abandoned crawfish burrows (see range map below). Crawfish Frogs are explosive breeders and can be heard for only a week or so in early spring. Their mating call is a deep gagging snore, a sonorous croak that I absolutely had to snag for my collection.

It was early spring of 2007. I had enlisted the help of John John MacGregor, Kentucky’s state herpetologist. On March 20, John e-mailed me that the weather looked good (rainy and warm) and urged me to meet him in western Kentucky the next afternoon. That evening I threw everything in my car and drove like a mad-man, covering 900 miles from Ithaca, New York, to western Kentucky, so I could rally with John at the appointed hour.

Shortly after dark, we homed-in on a calling group in a wetland in a grassy prairie that had been reclaimed from surface-mining. To my dismay, Spring Peepers were calling so loudly that it was impossible to record. For the next few hours, we drove all over the place, stopping and listening, but to no avail. Then, just when we were ready to give up, a friend of John’s (zoologist Brainard Palmer-Ball) called and informed us that had located a small calling group in a farm pond not far away. We drove to investigate.

The situation was perfect. Several Crawfish Frogs were clustered along one edge of the pond, calling intermittently. Other species (American Toad, Spring Peeper, Upland Chorus Frog, and Southern Leopard Frog) could be heard calling, but they in no way interfered. I was able to get some pretty decent recordings, though not entirely up to my standard. So I stayed in the area for two more nights, searching for other choruses (this included a foray into southern Illinois in hopes of finding Illinois Chorus Frog, but that didn’t work out). The night before I was to return home, I headed back to the little farm pond, and this time struck gold, capturing my best recording of all:

Crawfish Frogs snoring away in a small farm pond, with aggressive stuttered calls. 1am, 24 March 2007, near Princeton, KY. Recording © Lang Elliott.

Granted, my adventure was a clear success in terms of getting a great recording, but how much did it all cost? My trip lasted five days. I drove over 2000 miles (in my gas-guzzling Isuzu Trooper). I stayed in two motels. I ate lots of junk food. The final tally? Well, if I take into account the wear-and-tear on my car, the whole affair cost me at least a thousand bucks, perhaps considerably more.

So there you have it! Thousand Dollar Croaks! OMG! Such is the business of frog and toad recording! Gas guzzling, money guzzling, and time guzzling. But would I do it all over again? YOU BETCHA! I consider myself one lucky man for having recorded those awesome croaks. I only wish my bank account was in better shape. To remedy this situation, I suggest that all of you send your donations to The Frog Recordist Reclamation Fund, PO Box 1000 Bucks, Herpetoillogica, NY. Thank you in advance for your generosity!

range map for Crawfish Frog Crawfish Frog Range Map

Lost Maples Moonlight Serenade

by Lang Elliott · February 22, 2011 · 4 Comments

In early April of 2001, I visited Lost Maples State Natural Area in central Texas in search of Barking Frogs (Craugastor augusti), a unusual subtropical, land-breeding species found in dry, rocky regions from Texas to Arizona.

My adventure began not long after dark, as I hiked a trail that led up a valley next to a stream. I was thrilled to hear Barking Frogs calling from high on limestone bluffs above the trail, but the stream was too loud and the frogs too far away to get a pleasing recording. I tried climbing up to them, but the slope was much too steep and dangerous. So I continued up the valley. The night was magical. It was dead calm. The moon was full (or nearly so) and I was able to walk safely without using my headlamp. The temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21C) and the humidity was fairly high—perfect conditions for the Barking Frogs. If only I can get closer . . .

I discovered a second trail that led up the side of the valley. I followed it up to a flat ridge and sauntered along under bright moonlight. I remember scaring up two small herds of wild pigs, the pitter-patter of their small hooves fading into thick brush. At long last the trail began descending into the next valley, switch-backing down a limestone bluff above another stream course. It was here that I encountered several Barking Frogs and discovered that they were giving their gagging croaks from under large boulders or else from crevices in the limestone. No wonder their calls sounded muffled and resonant. I was pleased to get a nice recording of several males calling back-and-forth, punctuated by the soft chirps and trills of Cliff Chirping Frogs:

Several Barking Frogs calling from a limestone bluff, 1 am, 5 April 2001, Lost Maples State Natural Area near Vanderpool, Texas. Recorded by Lang Elliott.

After gathering a number of closeup recordings, I made several attempts to get a nice soundscape. My efforts generally failed until I droped down to the stream. At 3 am I captured my favorite portrait, a true “moonlight serenade” featuring a single Barking Frog sounding off from the bluff above the stream, with distant cricket frogs and cliff chirping frogs coming and going against the gurgling backdrop:

A single Barking Frog calling from a limestone bluff above a gurgling brook. 3 am, 5 April 2001, Lost Maples State Natural Area near Vanderpool, Texas. Recorded by Lang Elliott.

These recordings bring back my fond memory of walking the trail alone under soft moonlight, enveloped in a unique and extraordinary soundscape so different from what I’m used to back home. I remember enjoying the beauty and solitude, yet I wanted to share the magic with at least one other person. Returning to the campground just before dawn, I phoned a close friend who I thought would understand, and left a hurried description of my experience on her answering machine. The sun rose and the magic evaporated from view, yet a lasting and poignant impression had been made on my mind.

Long Pine Predawn

by Lang Elliott · February 15, 2011 · 9 Comments

Several years ago, my friend Beth and I visited the Everglades National Park in late May in hopes of videotaping frogs and toads. Unfortunately, it never rained and there was virtually no amphibian activity. So we spent most of time sound recording.

One of my favorite soundscapes from our trip is a predawn recording made at Long Pine Key campground. It is rich with sound. Greenhouse Frogs chirp like crazy from the shrubs surrounding our campsite. High-pitched insects give buzzy trills and Common Nighthawks give nasal peents. Chuck-will’s-widows sound off in the distance, their songs echoing through the pine woods. The most interesting sound is at the bottom end of the frequency spectrum: the booming of the nighthawks. Their airy expulsions (which remind one of “you know what”) occur when they dive toward the ground and then suddenly swoop upward, the air rushing through their spread wings:

Predawn soundscape from Long Pine Key campground in Everglades National Park. 4am, May 28, 2008. Recorded by Lang Elliott.

Though fairly busy, I am captivated by the mixture of sound. In particular, the numerous booms of the nighthawks create a flavor that is unusual among soundscapes.