The Music of Nature Blog
Hi Friends! Welcome to my Music of Nature blog, an ever-growing collection of free online articles, place-based celebrations, audio postcards, photo and video studies, musings and more … all created in celebration of the voices of the natural world.
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Binaural Soundscapes | Podcasts | Videos | Birds | Mammals | Amphibians | Reptiles | Insects | Ramblings | Miscellaneous
Dream of Spring
As temperatures plummet here in upstate New York, I cannot help but dream of spring. Yesterday I stumbled upon a dawn chorus from May 31 in 2013, recorded at a beaver pond not far from where I live. When I listened to it, I was struck by its inherent beauty, by the sweetly balanced mix of frog and bird sounds as dawn unfolds …
To Be A Child Again
What does it truly mean, as an adult, “to be a child again”? From my perspective, it is to touch upon an innocent frame of mind, an emotional state that is at once light-hearted, fun, and receptive to the beauty, to the miracle around us …
American Toad Mating Frenzy
Warm spring weather has lured the American Toads into their breeding ponds and pools. Males grab at anything that moves and often clump together in a mass around single females. Amplexus pairs sink to the bottom, and females begin laying their long strings of eggs …
Gray Catbird – Silhouette Song
This morning I went out with one goal in mind: to get video footage of a singing Gray Catbird, silhouetted against the dawn sky. Was I successful? Judge for yourself …
Grackle Squeaks
Of all backyard bird sounds, perhaps the least musical is the song of the Common Grackle. Check out this funny video of males giving their raspy squeaks as they lean forward and puff out their feathers …
Pickerel Frog Snoring
Enjoy this brief video of a snoring Pickerel Frog, that I made way back in 2009 when I first started dabbling in nature videography. Not bad, considering …
Bloodroot Impressions
In this lovely video, I’ve brought together my favorite clips of Bloodroot in an attempt to convey the luminous quality of the flowers, informed by the depth of my personal experience of being there, immersed in the bloom and in search of creative expression …
Sucker Run
Today I got my best underwater video footage of spawning male White Suckers, gathered at the base of a waterfall at the edge of town, excitedly awaiting the arrival of receptive females.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – Avian Jewel
The Ruby-crowned Kinglet … a tiny avian jewel with a scarlet patch on its crown … is one of my favorite birds, primarily because of it’s sprightly cheerful song, a series of very high notes followed by a rambling jumble and ending with a silly-sounding chant …
Pickerel Frogs – Hydrophone Surprise
Tonight I used my hydrophones to record underwater sounds of Spring Peepers in our backyard pond. To my complete surprise, there was quite a bit more going on than just the peeping of the peepers. which is all I could hear above water. There were loud snoring sounds, and a variety of chucking and stuttering calls. Oh my gosh … the underwater calls of Pickerel Frogs!
Raven Talk
This morning, at the break of dawn, I recorded the croaks and yelps of a family of Common Ravens, nesting in a dense spruce stand at the edge of my yard …
Downy Woodpecker Drumming Tree
It’s mid-April and the woodpeckers are drumming like crazy. This morning, I headed to a nearby natural area at dawn and soon captured a nice video of a Downy Woodpecker, drumming from near the top of a dead snag …
Robin Song – A Celebration of Gratefulness
Once again the robins sing,
A hint of snow still on the bough.
Treetops all around me ring …
With gratefulness, I hear them now.
Wilson’s Snipe – Shoreline Bobber
On a cold, snowy March morning, I videotaped a Wilson’s Snipe feeding along the edge of a small farm pond. I was mesmerized by his bobbing motion, as he poked his long bill into the mud in search of food …
