78 The birds that sing on the cusp of night – a leafy ravine in the Peak District (sleep safe after 16 mins)

Full Episode description

Early June days, up in the green of the Peak District hills, do not give way easily to night. The birds won’t let them. Brimming over with life and song, they sing at the dying light to stay, with all the gusto of dawn.

Here above the deep leafy ravine, their mercurial voices can be heard, pouring out into the sheer air, and down, onto the shallow stony river flowing below.

The light, for a while, stays. The day, balanced upon the very edge of the horizon, has, with its luminous glow, turned back to catch the last arias of the ravine.

As night falls, the last to sing is a robin, the last to fly is a goose. A lone rear-guard bird, filling the dark shrouded void with sparse echoing calls , as it flies back down the valley to join the others, amongst the woodland beside the reservoir beyond.

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This is part of a 24 hour recording we made last month to capture the sound landscape above the infamous Todbrook reservoir of Whaley Bridge. This spot was just on Cheshire side of the border with Derbyshire, the river a natural border between. We tied our spatial microphones to a tree growing out of the steep banks, about 60 feet above the river that feeds the reservoir with an almost unchanging flow of fresh moorland water. The aural space of the ravine on the transition into night is rarely if ever heard, and makes for a uniquely peaceful soundscape.