Birds Make Sound

It's another hot dry day in Phoenix. Wildfires are burning across Arizona including the fifth largest fire in state history, 30 miles northeast of where I sit. The birds out the window have their beaks agape, increasing their evaporative cooling while also appearing to share my slack-jawed incredulity at the relentless low-desert summer heat. Normally at this time of year I do biological field work in cooler climes but with many field seasons being suspended this year due to COVID-19, I am plodding through summer with the rest of Phoenix. Through the magic of digital recording, however, I’m able to time-travel to a mere three months ago: It is in the mid-60s and after a sudden early spring downpour, the normally bone-dry gulch behind my house is full of flowing water. Birds Make Sound · 200312 1624 Gulch (Headphones Recommended) -- Recorded with Sony PCM-A10 and FEL Stereo Clippy EM172s The somewhat unusual aural combination of flowing water with Sonoran desert regulars like a whi...

Listen to this: (Headphones recommended) It's been over a year since I recorded this in March 2019 and I’m only just beginning to understand what it is. We arrived in the dark of night, the graded dirt road violently vibrating my Honda Fit. After a few minutes of straining to hear, I turned off the radio and listened to the sound of every piece of my car and body rattle.  We pulled into the dirt parking area, shut off the engine and stepped outside. Suddenly free from the confines of the car, our ears began to open up beyond the immediate vicinity, expanding outward in every direction into the darkness...until we heard them. My girlfriend Nell and I had come to Whitewater Draw on the last night of February to experience the Sandhill Cranes that winter at this 600-acre wetland in the southeast corner of Arizona. A huge striking bird, I had only previously seen handfuls of migrating cranes off rural county roads outside Phoenix. Hearing tens of thousands of them at night though, di...