Snow Bunting, Hoylake 6th January 2021

There's been a flock of eight Snow Buntings on the beach at Hoylake for a couple of weeks, so I popped over today to take a look. Although the flock wasn't difficult to find they did suffer from repeated flushings by dog walkers, other members of the public and a rather selfish young photographer. I'm amazed they put up with all this disturbance, but they do keep returning to their favoured area just west of the Lifeboat station. With patience good views were possible from the promenade without venturing onto the beach.

Discovery - Birds: Singing For Survival

DISCOVERY - BIRDS: SINGING FOR SURVIVAL (320kbs-m4a/61mb/26mins)
BBC World Service broadcast: 9th November 2020

As large areas of the world have locked down this year, many of us have become more aware of the birdsong around us. The relative silence has allowed us to listen in. But scientists have known for several years that the birds themselves have been responding to human noise too, by pitching their songs and other calls higher, to be heard over the rumble of our urban life.

There are several ways in which birds can adapt how they communicate in the face of environmental pressures, but what are the limits to these adaptations? And what can this tell us about how to maximise conservation efforts in the future? Rory Crawford talks to ornithologists and animal behaviourists studying bird species around the world. He finds out how the advance of technology is helping researchers explore birds' preferences and behaviours in the wild, and hears how one particular bird changed its song, and the new version rapidly spread across North America – "the most viral tweet of all time", as it's been called!

Picture: A Robin [Erithacus rubecula], Credit: Gary Chalker/Getty Images

The Listening Service - Is Birdsong Music?

THE LISTENING SERVICE - IS BIRDSONG MUSIC? (128kbs-m4a/32mb/34mins)
BBC Radio 3 broadcast: 7th June 2020

Birdsong has fascinated composers for centuries, but is it really music as we understand it? Tom Service asks how birdsong has inspired and equipped human music over the years. He listens to music inspired by birdsong, made up from elements of birdsong and performed alongside birdsong - why does it have such a deep effect on the human psyche and how have the sounds of the natural world informed the development of human music?

With contributions from sound recordist, musician and ecologist Bernie Krause, Messiaen scholar Delphine Evans and naturalist Stephen Moss. Also archive material from Ludwig Koch, the pioneering sound recordist who made the first documented recording of a bird as an 8-year-old in 1889.

Rethink Music, with The Listening Service.

Each week, Tom aims to open our ears to different ways of imagining a musical idea, a work, or a musical conundrum, on the premise that "to listen" is a decidedly active verb.

How does music connect with us, make us feel that gamut of sensations from the fiercely passionate to the rationally intellectual, from the expressively poetic to the overwhelmingly visceral? What's happening in the pieces we love that takes us on that emotional rollercoaster? And what's going on in our brains when we hear them?

When we listen - really listen - we're not just attending to the way that songs, symphonies, and string quartets work as collections of notes and melodies. We're also creating meanings and connections that reverberate powerfully with other worlds of ideas, of history and culture, as well as the widest range of musical genres. We're engaging the world with our ears. The Listening Service aims to help make those connections, to listen actively.

BBC Archive Recording - Dawn Chorus
Field Recording - Nightingale [Wildsounds]
Field Recording - Blackbird [Wildsounds]
BBC Archive Recording - Starling [BBC]
BBC Archive Recording - Skylark [BBC]
Anon - Sumer Is Icumen In [Chandos]
Field Recording - Cuckoo [Wildsounds]
Louis‐Claude Daquin - Suite For Harpsichord No. 3 In E Minor, No.1; Le Coucou [Archiv]
Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 (Op. 68) In F Major "Pastoral" 2nd Movement, Szene Am Bach [Archiv]
Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 1: 1st Movement [DG]
Luigi Boccherini - Quintetto VI In D Major, G 276 "L'Ucelliera" - 2nd Movement: Allegro Giusto [Brilliant Classics]
Clément Janequin - Le Chant Des Oiseaux [HMC]
Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending For Violin And Orchestra [Warner]
Ottorino Respighi - The Pines Of Rome: The Pines Of The Janiculum [Decca]
Einojuhani Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus [Naxos]
Olivier Messiaen - Petites Esquisses d'Oiseaux; Le Rouge Gorge [Unicorn]
Olivier Messiaen - St Francis Of Assissi - Act 2 Le Preche Aux Oiseaux [Cybelia]
Olivier Messiaen - Chronochromie - VI Epode [EMI]
Olivier Messiaen - Oiseaux Exotiques [Disques Montaigne]
Olivier Messiaen - Cataloge d'Oiseaux - La Bouscarle [Erato]
Olivier Messiaen - Cataloge d'Oiseaux - Le Courlis Cendré [Erato]
Phil Riddett - British Wren [British Library]
Ludwig Koch - Wax cylinder recording of Indian Shama (1889)
Ludwig Koch - Wax cylinder recording of Blackbird (1901)
Ludwig Koch - Recording Bitterns
Jim Fassett - Symphony Of The Birds - 1st Movement: Andante E Lirico [EMI]
Richard Savage - Goldcrest [British Library]
Richard Blackford And Bernie Krause - The Great Animal Orchestra - 1. Introduction And Tuning [Nimbus]
Jonathan Harvey - Bird Concerto With Pianosong [NMC]

Costing The Earth - Silencing With Noise

COSTING THE EARTH - SILENCING WITH NOISE (320kbs-m4a/63mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 5th May 2020

Sound is what the world does. From the tiniest bugs to the largest whales, animals use sound to communicate, for example, they sing to attract a mate and establish a territory. But this is all happening against a background of man-made noise that was, until the last few weeks, increasing in volume all the time. So what happens if you can’t hear or make yourself heard or you are too stressed or distracted to behave normally? Andy Radford, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Bristol explores the impact of this global pollutant and the mitigation measures that could help.

Producer: Sarah Blunt

David Attenborough's Life Stories

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcasts

Series of talks by Sir David Attenborough on the natural histories of creatures and plants from around the world.

Producer: Julian Hector.

Series 1 first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2009. Series 2 first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 4. GIANT BIRDS (320kbs-m4a/23mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 28th April 2019

Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa, is the largest continental island in the world. It is also the place where the largest egg known to have existed was laid, and the bird that laid it was also a giant.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 5. SONGSTERS (320kbs-m4a/23mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 5th May 2019

People are not the only species who sing. Many birds do and even another ape. What messages are conveyed in the syllables, melodies and repeated phrases, and who is listening?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 6. BOWERBIRDS (320kbs-m4a/22mb/9mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 12th May 2019

One of the most extraordinary structures in the animal world is constructed by a Bower Bird. Sir David tells the life story of the Vogelkopf Bower Bird, the one that raises the bar higher than the rest.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 8. ARCHAEOPTERYX (320kbs-m4a/22mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 30th June 2019

Sir David recounts the remarkable story of a feather, like any other feather from a bird - only it was 150 million years old, and the animal that lost it lived when birds had not yet evolved.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 10. BIRDS OF PARADISE (320kbs-m4a/22mb/9mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 28th July 2019

Sir David Attenborough talks about the Birds of Paradise, a group of birds which evolved in the relative safety of New Guinea, allowing them to acquire adornments and feathered decorations so resplendent that they fooled the early explorers who discovered them.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 14. THE DODO (320kbs-m4a/21mb/9mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 25th August 2019

The Dodo is the caricature of extinction. This turkey-sized flightless pigeon lived on a remote island and was slaughtered by seafarers for its meat. The same fate has met other flightless species. Can we learn this lesson from history?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 1 - 16. BIRD'S NEST SOUP (320kbs-m4a/22mb/9mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 8th September 2019

Filming the birds that make the nests of saliva so prized by Chinese gourmet chefs in the total darkness of a Borneo cave proved difficult, until a conical mound of bat guano provided a natural platform.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 2 - 2. KIWI (320kbs-m4a/22mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 8th December 2019

New Zealand had several species of flightless bird living across the islands, all of which are now extinct, bar one. The Kiwi has become one of those species iconic of the country, like the Koala to Australia, the Giraffe to Africa and the Alpaca to South America. Historically, New Zealand didn't have ground predators such as wild cats and stoats - which allowed birds to exploit living on the ground. Being flightless in New Zealand was a good way to be a bird.

Having filmed Kiwis, Sir David Attenborough muses on the niche the Kiwi occupies on the ground. He argues the Kiwi behaves more like a mammal than a bird, but what mammal do you think, in Attenborough's view, the Kiwi most resembles?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 2 - 7. WALLACE (320kbs-m4a/23mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 22nd March 2020

It was the great travel books written in the 19th century by Alfred Russell Wallace that inspired Sir David Attenborough himself to achieve great things in the realm of natural history.

But Attenborough tells us that Wallace was more than just a great travel writer. His power of meticulous observation and recording as he explored many parts of the world were in the highest league imaginable, even for Victorian standards - and his power of analysis very much akin with Darwin, his great contemporary.

Wallace independently came up with a theory of evolution that was in parallel to Darwin's thinking - two field naturalists breaking huge conventions of the time and coming up with the single most important theory in Biology. How did they resolve the conflict between themselves?

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 2 - 8. HUMMERS (320kbs-m4a/23mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 5th April 2020

Hummingbirds are given spectacular names motivated by their striking colours, patterns and shimmering metallic iridescence; their names are beautiful as are the birds.

David Attenborough has filmed them on several occasions and is fascinated by their agility and flying skills to drink nectar from flowers inaccessible to any other animal. And propelled by this rocket fuel of nature they are capable of flying great distances and living life in the fast lane. Enchanting in this story is how moved David Attenborough is when recalling a story of their conservation; a rare piece of good news he comments.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LIFE STORIES: SERIES 2 - 14. CUCKOO (320kbs-m4a/22mb/10mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 20th January 2019

The Cuckoo is one of the iconic brood parasites of the world - the bird that cons another species into taking its egg as its own and rears the chick to fledging. In the single frame of the Cuckoo you have a long distance migrant, travelling from Africa to breeding grounds in the temperate north, and back again. The Cuckoo does not raise its own chick and across a range of Cuckoo individuals, they parasitise several species of bird - all much smaller than they are. David Attenborough explores the world of the Cuckoo and not only marvels at their natural history but tells the story of how a wildlife cameraman resolved a scientific mystery - and how the Cuckoo itself harbours yet more secrets to science and natural history.

Desert Island Discs Longplay - Sir David Attenborough

DESERT ISLAND DISCS LONGPLAY - SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH (320kbs-m4a/137mb/59mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 6th June 2020

Kirsty Young chats to broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who chooses his eight tracks, book and luxury item for the desert island.

Specially extended show to mark Desert Island Disc's 70th anniversary for BBC Radio 4 Extra.

He has seen more of the world than anyone else who has ever lived - he's visited the north and south poles and witnessed most of the life in-between - from the birds in the canopies of tropical rainforests to giant earthworms in Australia.

But despite his extraordinary travels, there is one part of the globe that's eluded Sir David. As a young man and a keen rock-climber, he yearned to conquer the highest peak in the world.

"I won't make it now - I won't make it to base camp now - but as a teenager, I thought that the only thing a red-blooded Englishman really should do was to climb Everest."

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2012.

Francisco Yglesia - Pajaro Campana Or The Bell Bird [Analogue Rock]
Franz Schubert - Impromptu No.1 In F Minor [Ottavo]
George Frideric Handel - And The Glory Of The Lord [Decca]
Lyre Bird - Lyre Bird [BBC Sound Archive]
Johann Sebastian Bach - 3rd Of Bach's Goldberg Variations [Sony Classical]
The  Gamelan Orchestra - Legong [Argo]
Carl Michael Ziehrer - Wiener Burger Waltz [Deutsche Grammophon]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Soave Sia Il Vento – Gentle Be The Breeze [Philips]

Private Passions - Chris Watson

PRIVATE PASSIONS - CHRIS WATSON (320kbs-m4a/81mb/35mins)
BBC Radio 3 broadcast: 12th April 2020

Wildlife sound recordist and sound artist Chris Watson talks to Michael Berkeley about how his favourite music is inspired by the natural world.

Chris is most famous for his sound recordings for David Attenborough’s television series – for which he’s won BAFTAs – but he’s a musician too. A member of the influential post-punk band Cabaret Voltaire in the late 70s and early 80s, today he’s a sound artist and composer, creating installations around the world.

His 2003 release Weather Report, featuring soundscapes of a Kenyan savannah, a Highland glen, and an Icelandic glacier, was voted one of the 100 best albums to hear before you die by The Guardian, and has been described as ‘cinema for the ears’.

Chris’s mission in life is to make us stop what we’re doing and listen to the sounds of the natural world and this is reflected in his choices of music. We hear his own recording of a Sami calling to his ancestors across a Norwegian lake, and northern landscapes echoed in Sibelius’s symphonic poem Tapiola. And Chris chooses the music of multi-award-winning Icelandic film composer Hildur Guðnadottir, who worked with him to record the soundscape for the television series Chernobyl.

Chris tells Michael about the challenges of recording in cold and hostile environments for his many series with David Attenborough, and the pleasures of the year he spent recording the sounds around Aldeburgh for Benjamin Britten’s centenary, in 2013. We hear the magical combination of a recording he made of a nightingale in Britten’s garden paired with the Ciaconna from Britten’s Second Cello Suite.

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Ánde Somby - Gadni - Spirit Of The Mountain
Jean Sibelius - Tapiola
Hildur Guðnadóttir - Folk Faer Andlit
Pierre Schaeffer - Etude Aux Chemins de Fer
Benjamin Britten - Cello Suite No.2 (5th mvt: Chaconne)
Adrian Corker - I Have The Package
Claire M Singer - Solas