This is a blend of intimate and wide spatial quiet, captured as it happened from beside an old oak tree, in a remote spot in the Forest of Dean. The time is 3:30am and the microphones are recording alone. It's 90 minutes to dawn.
What we hear in the foreground are the intimate textures of a trickling stream, that's completely hidden from view under thickly tangled vines. A hedgehog is foraging through the dense leaf litter, making delicate scratchy sounds like a moving pin cushion. The space immediately around the oak tree holding the microphones is sloping, and partly cleared of trees but only for about ten yards or so. The forest stretches all around for miles.
As time passes, high planes overfly the woodland, in soft rumbly arcs. A car, speeding along the country road that bisects this area of woodland, makes white noise like a breeze in the trees. At 36 minutes, sliding from far left to far right of scene, a male woodcock flies through the clearing, making a strange qwacking type call that ends in a bright squeak. This call is known as a roding flight and it returns quite a few times.
As dawn approaches, the echoing hoots of tawny owls reverberates sonorously across the huge expanse of the forest. Dogs distantly bark, and farm animals can sometimes be heard. Towards the end, a song thrush begins to sing, short melodious notes in repeated phrases. Dawn is near.
218 Sing dawn - the songbirds of Abney Park nature reserve
217 Upland woods in winter gales (part 2 - sleep safe)
216 Sat on the sand of East Looe beach
215 Calm within Kilminorth Woods
214 Storm over hotel peninsula
213 Sound-scenes we love from four years of Lento
212 Ear witness: innercity woodland peace
211 Nothe Fort at night - quiet swirling waves
210 Watery dell amidst trees at night (sleep safe)
209 Downstream of the old mill
208 Lone tree under windswept telegraph wires
207 Bucolic dell in upland meadows (subtle, slow, best with headphones)
206 Dawn birdsong in the leafy ravine
205 Soundscenes of a changing tide (sleep safe)
204 Rain falls on steep craggy woodland (sleep safe)
203 Dartmoor stream above waterfall gorge (part 2)
202 Upland woods in winter gales (breathe easy and *sleep safe*)
201 Out on Cooden Beach at night (part 2 - night breakers on shingle) *sleep safe*
200 Windswept night in the belfry of Rye Church
199 Moorland forest mid winter gales
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