Northwest Soundscapes

Black Lives Matter demonstrators marching at the Womxn's March in Seattle call-and-respond chant, "Whose lives matter? Black Lives Matter!". Down the block a religious proselytizer yells into a bullhorn. When the marchers are reach him, they stop, standing strong and chanting in his direction until he relents, causing a cheer to break out among the onlookers. The marchers continue with another cal...

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_02 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_03 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_04 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_06 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_12 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_11 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_01 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_07 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_08 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_09 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_10 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_13 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_14 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

WOMXNS MARCH_raw_05 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

Traveling home on the last day I made a couple pit stops. The first was to record some particularly impatient cattle lined up by a roadside pasture waiting for breakfast.

Traveling home, I made a pit-stop to head into the forests after passing over the Cascades to record… some cascades

Traveling home, I made a pit-stop to head into the forests after passing over the Cascades to record… some cascades

My final night I set up near the same location I had the evening before, but in a higher elevation, away from the marsh and into the plateau. I’d heard coyotes coming from that direction the night before and I needed to see if I could catch a hint of them before leaving. I wasn’t disappointed, being scared half-witted by the sound that erupted in my headphones just at the moment I’d thought I’d mi...

Because of the long summer-time aridness of the refuge, vegetation is sparse. Prairie grasses and sage dominate the landscape outside of the marshy coulees. There are times in which I felt like I was out just to record wind through sage.

The Columbia National Wildlife Refuge is an important stopover for many migrating birds, including Sandhill Crane. I missed the Crane stopover for this year, but did manage to catch a few other temporary residents, including the American Bittern. I’d never heard a bittern before this week, and so I was not actually aware of what I was hearing until I inquired at the refuge headquarters. To put it...

Morning At Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, 2016-06-10 by Andy "soundeziner" Martin

The second trip of this project was to the Columbia Wildlife Refuge from June 9-12. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was certainly not prepared for the stunning natural beauty of this location. Located in the the Channeled Scablands of the Northwest, the land around this area was carved out dramatically and violently during a series of ice age deluges. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet dammed up t...

Near the main entrance I found a marsh that is popular with Yellow-Headed Blackbirds. Raucous cousins of Redwing Blackbirds, these birds sound like they should live in a jungle. The males sit on exposed reeds or tree limbs and make great clock-wise swings with their heads and wings, letting out a long “marooooooow” call that sounds like a horribly frightened house-cat. Meanwhile, the females stay...

Traveling into the refuge, I came upon a Cliff Swallow rookery. Thousands of swallows, darting in and out of the cliff, hanging in hundreds or thousands of nests. Their numbers were so great that the presence of two Red-tailed Hawks wasn’t something to be afraid of. Every time one would swoop close, the nests would empty and a great cloud of swallows would pester the hawk until it left.