On the footpath from Winchelsea to Rye (the one that goes inland and round in a long loop) we came across a small copse of trees in the corner of a field, by a heavy metal gate. The spot was surrounded on all sides by fields and pastures. The day was starting to get hot, so under the shade we just stood at the gate, to take in the air.
Above the baa-ing of sheep and lambs, and the melodic callings of woodland birds, the trees, tops against the blue sky, were waving slightly in the spring breeze. They stood together, turning the moving air into soft susurating sound. Vague voices seemed to waft from somewhere. Perhaps it was the farm we saw signposted a little further on.
It was the space underneath the trees that possessed the most mesmerising feel. The trees seemed to somehow distil the landscape. We set up the mics, then walked on, to let them capture the quiet alone.
With us gone, they captured the singing birds, and the insect hum. The grazing sheep and lambs, and two propeller planes, high over, with ocean views of the coast. They caught the cracklings of drying twigs amongst the dense leaf litter, and that strange nameless blur that time makes as it passes in a quiet country place. They witnessed a squirrel too, noisily nosing about on dried broken bark and leaves between the trees, and later jumping through the branches. Quietest of all though, and right at the end, they caught the distant passing calls (extreme right of scene) of a cuckoo.
-- Cuckoos are the most fleeting of England's migrant birds spending only about three weeks here to lay their eggs, before flying back to Africa, They never get to see their chicks, but still the young birds once fledged still manage to follow their parent back to the same place in Africa.
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
Wading cows and a passing cuckoo - the lakes and woodland of Chatsworth
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
Listening to the longshore drift
65 Songs from the churchyard of St Mary’s Gilston
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