Sound and vision blog

This week’s post comes from Cheryl Tipp, Wildlife and Environmental Sounds Curator.

Above: Photo of a Spotted Hyaena by DJM Photos. From Flickr.

Although it may sound like it, the Spotted Hyaenas in this recording are not suffering from a fit of the giggles. Their laughter-like calls actually express feelings of frustration, excitement or fear rather than amusement. These sounds are usually produced by individuals during encounters with dominant members of the clan, when facing a potential predator, or when they want something they can’t have, such as access to a recent kill. Despite the scientific explanation, it’s difficult not to imagine them sharing an inside joke though.

Listen to the Spotted Hyaenas

This recording was made by Nigel Tucker at Imire Safari Ranch, Zimbabwe in April 1999 (British Library ref W1CDR0001982 BD25). It forms part of a larger collection of recordings made in the area which includes the sounds of other well-known African mammals such as lions, elephants, rhinos, wildebeest and antelopes.  

This week’s post comes from Cheryl Tipp, Wildlife and Environmental Sounds Curator.

Above: Photo of a Tawny Owl by Jon Pauling. From Pixabay.

As autumn gets underway, the characteristic hoot of the Tawny Owl (Strix aluco) will soon be heard in woodlands across Britain. It is at this time that males use their voice to establish territories in readiness for the breeding season that begins in late winter. This instantly recognisable sound has sometimes been reflected in traditional folk names. In Shropshire the Tawny Owl was commonly known as a Billy Hooter while in Cheshire the species was referred to locally as a Hill Hooter. In the north of England, the name changed again to a Jenny Howlet.

Listen to the Tawny Owl

This recording of a Tawny Owl was made by Richard Margoschis in the grounds of Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire, a few hours before dawn on 16 October 1979. The strident hoots of our male are set against a drizzly woodland scene. A second male can be heard responding in the background.

The British Library ref. is WS5492 C8.

If you’d like to listen to more wildlife and environmental sounds recorded after dark, check out this 60-minute mix of recordings from the collection which can be found in the NTS Radio archive.

This week's selection comes from Greg Green, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking Our Sound Heritage.

Above: Charles and Heather Myers, used with permission from the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Photographer unknown.

Charles and Heather Myers were a husband-and-wife recording duo. They met through their shared love of nature and sound recordings. Their impressive collection here at the library (BL shelfmark: WA 2010/017) consists of a whopping 559 open reel tapes and over 5,000 recordings. All are meticulously edited, catalogued, and organised by species and subject. The duo’s dedication and technical prowess make every recording in this collection a joy to listen to, and the time they spent organising and documenting made it a pleasure to digitise and catalogue as part of the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project. Any recordist should aspire to have a collection half as good as this!

Charles and Heather were both active members of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society (WSRS) and regularly met at field meetings before they got married and set up home together in Shropshire. They were always more than happy to share their knowledge and recordings with anyone interested, and often sent in material to the WSRS journals and members’ recording compilations, as well as entering, and often winning, the society’s annual recording competition. Heather took over as the society’s secretary from 1983 to 1994. Both Charles and Heather’s obituaries in the Wildlife Sound journals are filled with kind tributes from members who saw them as friends and mentors.

Above: Heather Myers with reflector, used with permission from the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Photographer unknown.

As well as contributing to the WSRS, they often submitted recordings and prepared pieces to their local talking newspaper for the blind. Many of these submissions are preserved in the collection, including this piece titled ‘Garden Birds No. 3’. In it, Mr and Mrs Myers welcome the listener into their garden in Shrewsbury, and introduce them to some of the regular avian visitors and their vocalisations. In this excerpt, Charles explains the difference between song thrush and mistle thrush songs. The full-length recording, archived here as British Library call number WA 2010/017/502 C6, also features the sounds of magpies, crows, house sparrows and dunnocks, with the latter two introduced by Heather. This is one of many precious recordings from the collection in which Heather and Charles’s passion and personality shines through.

Listen to Garden Birds No. 3

Download Charles and Heather Myers transcript

Above: Charles Myers with reflector, used with permission from the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Photographer unknown.

Sadly the recording ends abruptly. The piece is incomplete, and neither ‘Garden Birds No.1’ nor ‘Garden Birds No. 2’ can be found elsewhere in the archive.

If you enjoyed this recording and would like to hear more from Charles and Heather Myers, a 60-minute mix of ambient sounds and talk from the collection can be found in the NTS Radio archive.

This week's selection comes from Dr Madeline White, Curator of Oral History.

We all know what a hedgehog looks like: small, brown, covered in prickly spines, adorable by any measure. Few of us have seen one in the wild though, much less heard the noises they make. As nocturnal creatures who like to hide in the undergrowth they are already hard to spot, but their habitats are at risk from urbanisation and their numbers in the UK are in jeopardy.

Meet Hugo:

Photo credit: Madeline White

I took this photo outside my house in 2017. It was my third encounter with a hedgehog in the middle of the road in as many weeks. Each time I dutifully donned some gardening gloves and moved them out of the road into a bushy area close by. As delightful as the opportunity to see a hedgehog up close was, it was worrying that I was seeing them with such frequency in the middle of the road. A hedgehog can travel around a mile a night to find food and a mate. But as more people build walls and fences on the boundaries of their homes and gardens, the pathways that hedgehogs take between them are closed off, forcing them out of the safety of the garden and into the danger of the road.

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week, a campaign run by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society that highlights the problems hedgehogs face and what the public can do to help. One of the simplest actions we can take is to make ‘hedgehog highways’ in our fences to give hedgehogs like Hugo safe routes between gardens.

So have you ever heard a hedgehog huff? Perhaps not, but courtesy of the British Library Sound Archive, you can now. As you listen, I encourage you to think of ways you can help the hedgehogs where you live:

Hedgehog [BL REF W1CDR0001374 BD1]

Cute, right?

Follow @CherylTipp and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Wildlife & Environmental Sounds Curator.

Birds have long been viewed as predictors of weather. Their voices, flight patterns and nest building activities have been closely observed by countless generations, keen on knowing what conditions to expect for the coming year.

One such bird is the Rook (Corvus frugilegus). This member of the corvid family is mainly found in farmland and open woodland from north-western Europe to eastern Siberia. A highly social bird, rooks congregate in large, noisy groups called rookeries. They start building their nests ready for egg laying in February and it’s the position of these nests that is said to indicate what kind of summer can be expected.

The old saying goes like this:

'When in the trees the rooks build high, expect the summer to be warm and dry.'

In 2012 Alan Burbidge made the following recording of a treetop rookery on the Scottish island of Islay. The busy, noisy atmosphere was brilliantly captured by the two microphones laid out on grass near the edge of the rookery trees.

Rooks calling at a nest site. Recorded by Alan Burbidge on Islay, Scotland, 2012 (BL shelfmark WA 2012/016/004)

Rookery (Photo by Debs-eye, CC-BY-NC-ND)

As pleasing as this little piece of folklore is, it doesn’t help very much as rooks generally like to build their nests up high anyway. If you’re able to get out walking this month, do listen out for rooks and pay attention to where they’re building their nests. But perhaps don’t start planning those summer barbeques just yet.

Follow @CherylTipp and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

This week’s selection comes from Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds

You'd be hard pressed to find anything cuter than a sleeping dormouse. This tiny little rodent can spend up to seven months of the year asleep, moving between a state of hibernation and torpor (deep sleep) before reawakening when the weather is warm enough.

The following recording was made over 50 years in London by wildlife sound recordist Lawrence Shove. In it we can hear the rhythmic high-pitched calls of a dormouse fast asleep, oblivious to the activity around it.

Common Dormouse calls during hibernation recorded in London England on 11 April 1966 (BL REF 104845)

Common Dormouse calls during hibernation, recorded in London, England on 11 April 1966 (BL REF 104845)

This recording is part of a much larger collection of British wildlife recorded by Shove during the 1960s and 1970s. The collection has recently been preserved through the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project and will soon be available online.

Ever wanted to create a game inspired by trees? Well now’s your chance!

The British Library will be running Games in the Woods, a tree-themed online game jam as part of this year’s Urban Tree Festival which takes place from 15 to 23 May 2021. The festival, now in its fourth year, celebrates all things related to urban and suburban trees, woodlands and associated wild places that bring so much life and joy to our cities.

The jam encourages people of all ages, either alone or in teams, to create digital or analogue games such as video games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games or anything else that springs to mind.

Participants are encouraged to make use of the library’s digital content when creating their games. A dedicated playlist of downloadable wildlife and environmental sound recordings is available on the library’s Soundcloud account. From woodland creatures and babbling brooks to rumbling thunder and pouring rain, these recordings should come in useful when designing soundtracks.

A wide selection of images from the library’s collection of digitised 19th century books can also be drawn upon during the creative process. Check out our Flora and Fauna albums or, if you’re feeling lucky,  just use tree-related terms to search the photostream.

Head on over to the Library's Digital Scholarship blog where Stella Wisdom has posted more information about the jam. Here you can also read about a similar novel-themed jam that was recently organised by Leeds Libraries.

Games in the Woods will run throughout the duration of the festival. There will be a launch event on Saturday 15 May with inspiring examples of interactive digital experiences featuring trees and then a show and tell on Sunday 23 May for jammers to share their creations. We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Follow @CherylTipp and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

This week’s section comes from Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds

It’s always advisable to keep your distance from wild birds, particularly during the breeding season. The main reason, of course, is to avoid causing any distress to the birds. Chicks are being born, predators are lurking and emotions are running high. So the last thing they need is to worry about pesky humans getting in the way.

Staying away from nesting birds is also a good idea from a self-preservation point of view. Now you may be thinking, ‘But what could they do to me? Start making those annoying alarm calls? Maybe try to fly at me? I can cope with that.’ These responses are true for many birds. But if you happen upon a pair of Northern Fulmars, you can expect something much worse. They will puke on you.

I’m happy to report that no puke was involved in the making of the following recording. Our recordist, Ian Christopher Todd, respectfully kept his distance and was rewarded with this tranquil scene. The cackling calls of nesting fulmars are joined by the gentle lapping of the North Sea and the gruff barks from a nearby Great Black-backed Gull.

Northern Fulmars in a Shetland cove recorded by Ian Christopher Todd on the Shetland Islands Scotland 11 June 2004 [BL REF 201315]

Fulmars nest on steep cliff edges and so you probably won’t need to worry. But do keep this is mind when you next visit the British coastline. For if you get puked on by a fulmar it will be oily and smelly and nobody will want to sit next to you on the journey home.

Follow @CherylTipp and @soundarchive for all the latest news.