One of the best things that has happened as a result of starting this blog is to meet some incredible people. One such person is Amy Grisak, a freelance writer from Great Falls, Montana. Amy worked for a time as a sound recordist for National Geographic – a highly enviable gig that is just a […]
Sound recording adventures with Amy Grisak Read More »
Days nine and ten of my Fall 2016 border-to-border road trip Following my lovely but damp night spent along the Grey’s River in Wyoming, I headed south on scenic highway 89, then across the dusty plains to Green River. From there I headed south along the western flank of Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. The
The beaches of ol’ Flaming Gorge Read More »
When I think of Thailand, I tend to think of crowded, noisy cities like Bangkok, or the tsunami-prone beaches of western Thailand. But beyond the cities and beaches, Thailand has a number of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries that protect wild forests, canyons, and their inhabitants. Places so dense, so remote, so wild that tigers,
Vicarious recording: Wild Thailand Read More »
This last summer, I had the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the Nature Sounds Society, which met near Yuba Pass, California. I was able to tie the meeting in with my annual summer visit to family in northern Nevada. Yuba Pass is north of Truckee, California, and is a beautiful area of towering
Learning from the pros Read More »
It’s a sad irony that one of our most important senses, hearing, is so taken for granted. So much information about the world around us comes in through our ears, but we place such precedence on what comes through our eyes. We are very visual creatures, granted, with an ability to see color and detail,
“What are you going to do with those recordings?” Read More »
Close to the US-Mexico border, where New Mexico and Arizona meet Chihuahua and Sonora, lies one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. More than a dozen small mountain ranges rise from the surrounding desert, and are often referred to as “Sky Islands”, as their forested slopes appear to be islands in a sea of grassland and
Summer has officially arrived in southern Arizona, even if the calendar says it’s still a couple of weeks off. Daytime temperatures in Tucson have exceeded 100 Fahrenheit for the last several days, and are expected to stay above 100 for the foreseeable future. One of the few things that makes this kind of heat tolerable
Swamp coolers and cicadas Read More »
An interesting article came across my desk recently. Entitled, “Ecological homogenization of urban USA,” it presented some recent research on landscape structure within some of the major US cities, compared to their surrounding ecosystems. In general, there is a great similarity among neighborhood landscapes, whether they are in Phoenix, Baltimore, Miami, or Boston. The “idealized”
Urbanizing the soundscape Read More »
As winter fades to spring here in the Sonoran Desert, the evenings have been punctuated with the calls of Great Horned Owls. I’ve tried a couple of times to record them, but their voices are often drowned out by the barking dogs and vehicles. But a few nights ago, I heard a pair calling loudly
On the way home from a recent trip to western New Mexico and the White Mountains of Arizona, I stopped near the Gila River Bird area to spend the night. I stayed in this same spot about a year and a half ago (see Things that go bump in the night). At that time, the
Nighttime visitors Read More »
The birds around my house are really getting fired up. A week or two of seventy-degree weather (albeit interspersed with snow squalls) seems to have sent them into overdrive. They start chirping at first light, and by 6:30 am the dawn chorus is in full swing. Unfortunately, that is also when my little community on
Early Spring in the Sonoran Desert Read More »
