Mid-afternoon. June hot. An overgrown track on the Chatsworth Estate, close to the peaceful lakes above the house, between meadows and dense woodland. An abundance of fresh hoof marks. A route used not by people, but by livestock changing fields. Hedgerows scent the quiet air with pollen. Cow parsley, moist nettles, something like aniseed. Nobody is around, so we leave the microphones behind to record, on the trunk of a tree facing straight into the sound vista.
Through the tall trees, beneath the loudly singing birds, come the echoes of cows. Knee deep and wading. Splashing and wallowing in the cool shallows.
With us gone the true sound of the woodland is revealed. An infinite humming, of bees and countless tinier insects. It can, if we let it, grate with modern taste, but it is a key barometer of life. Humming is a sound-measure of biodiversity, and the louder it is, the healthier the ecosystem. This is a well place.
The birds and the insects and the wallowing cows are, with the woodland and the lake, basking in the summer heat. And then, at nine minutes, the thing we never thought could happen...
A magic spell. A sonorous rocking call.
A simple pair of musical notes, that flow through the air with a special kind of wistful purity.
A cuckoo. All-too fleeting. But a cuckoo. Flying.
Night tide turning at pillbox point (sleep safe)
Afternoon meadow in late summer
Down at the marina on a weekday in August
Suffolk Wood (part 9) - the hour before dawn with owls and nocturnal animals
82 Hill top oak in strong wind - a natural source of white noise (sleep safe)
Rising tide in the rock garden - the sea wall near Bradwell-on-Sea
A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (High-def sound and sleep safe)
Essence of estuary
78 The birds that sing on the cusp of night - a leafy ravine in the Peak District (sleep safe after 16 mins)
77 The cuckoo of Swanscombe Marsh
Last pasture before the sea - Winchelsea to Rye
75 Yacht masts on the estuary at Wrabness (part 1)
74 Night shallowing in a Suffolk Wood - listen with headphones (sleep safe)
Slow rhythms of the Hoo Peninsula
The tunnel, the towpath and the window - under the M6 at Spaghetti Junction
70 - Blue sky. Empty beach. Low tide.
Time beside a stream in the Welsh hills
Birdsong in rain from inside the derelict chapel at Abney Park nature reserve
May rain after daybreak
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