The snow is falling in the Sierras and northern Nevada has settled into its winter soundscapes. Insects have gone quiet and the birds are too busy looking for food to make much noise. It’s a good time to organize and sort out the huge number of sound files I collected last spring and summer.
One of my favorite sounds of late summer are the crickets. I have a large crabapple tree in my backyard filled with the rhythms of snowy tree crickets. But they are often drowned out by nearby traffic and loud stereos, so when I wanted to record crickets this summer, I headed out to the Carson River.
The city river parks are now posted as only being open dawn to dusk, so night recording there is no longer allowed. Of course, those signs don’t keep the partiers and polluters from sneaking down to the river’s edge at night, they just keep us law-abiding folks out. But further downstream, between Dayton and Fort Churchill, is a tiny strip of BLM land that is open for camping. It’s also heavily impacted by partiers and OHV’ers that like to play in the sand, but it’s far enough from the highways that at least traffic noise (except for planes) is minimal.
So I set up camp near the river in late August. That stretch of the river has a soft, sandy bottom and is nearly soundless. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived. The birds were quiet and the crickets had not started singing yet, so the only sound was the rustle of the cottonwood leaves. I quickly ate a sandwich, set up the mics, and watched the moon rise over the river. The skies still carried a bit of smoke from the California wildfires.
Just before it got too dark to see, I started noticing some small bats skimming over the water and fliting among the cottonwood branches. I attached my Dodotronics mic to my phone and recorded some very intense bat activity. Here is just 13 seconds of it, both pitch- and time-shifted to make it audible to human ears. There are at least two species vocalizing. Listen for the feeding buzz at the end.
Later, several species of crickets began singing, joined by poorwills, screech owls, and distant great horned owls and coyotes. Beavers in the river called, slapped their tails, and one climbed out of the river, crunched through the leaf litter, and started chewing on a tree. Listening through headphones to hear the distant coyotes.
It was a great night of listening!
For more information on singing insects, see:
Awesome
Thanks!