The Listener Podcast

We often talk about depth of field in photography, but there's a depth of field in sound, too. When I record the ocean, I don't simply place my microphones at the water's edge. I record from different distances, sometimes hundreds of feet away, sometimes closer to the breaking surf, and sometimes right where the smallest bubbles crackle and burst as the water retreats across the sand. Each positio...

When I was a young boy in Birmingham, I first learned what the word extinct meant. Gone forever. Back then, I couldn't really comprehend it. Today, that word has followed me throughout my life. For more than five decades I have travelled the world recording the voices of nature. Some of those voices have now disappeared from the wild. I recorded the Hawaiian crow, the ʻAlalā, now extinct in the wi...

My recent trip to the Galápagos Islands left me questioning something we often take for granted. What exactly do we mean by pristine wilderness? I was fortunate enough to spend time alone recording the islands before other passengers came ashore. Just me, my microphones and an extraordinary orchestra of wildlife. Sea lions, fur seals, dolphins, marine iguanas and countless birds. It was magical. T...

The first time I ever recorded wild hyenas was on the remote Skeleton Coast of Namibia. I ran a cable from my rooftop tent, placed my microphones near a carcass and waited in the darkness. What I recorded that night completely changed the way I thought about hyenas. Their communication was extraordinary — arguments, warnings, excitement, submission and a very obvious hierarchy within the clan. Yea...

I've wandered through rainforests where the air was so thick with life it almost hummed. I've stood on Arctic tundra in silence so complete you could hear snow settling. I've recorded dawn choruses in Africa, the haunting calls of wolves in North America, and the songs of birds that may never be heard again. More than sixty countries. Tens of thousands of hours behind a microphone. Yet there is on...

This series of recordings was made at the same location, on the same day and at the same time each year, from 2000 to 2017. Each segment is 30 seconds long, allowing you to hear the gradual decline of the soundscape over time. When I began recording here, Pacific chorus frogs were abundant, forming a rich natural chorus. As the years pass, their voices diminish, and in some years they disappear al...

The first time I stepped into the Daintree Rainforest, I was completely blown away. Even getting there felt like an adventure. The road beyond the river was little more than a rough track, so an off road vehicle was essential. To reach the rainforest, you first crossed the Daintree River on a tiny cable ferry, leaving the modern world behind and entering one of the oldest living ecosystems on Eart...

Some places live in your imagination long before you ever set foot there. For me, one of those places was Slimbridge. As a young boy, I sat glued to the television watching Sir Peter Scott and dreaming of the vast flocks of geese and swans that gathered on the wetlands beside the River Severn. Even through the TV speaker, I could sense there was something magical about the sounds of that place. At...

Some of the most beautiful sounds I have recorded in Australia have come from frogs. At night, after heavy rain, the forest changes completely. The darkness fills with calls from hidden lives: the Green-lipped Frog calling from the rainforest canopy, Fletcher’s Frog buried in the wet leaf litter, the Sphagnum Frog hidden deep in mossy mountain bogs, and Lesueur’s Frog calling beside clear rocky st...

Some recordings stay with you for a lifetime. I traveled from the Kenyan coast at Mombasa to Buffalo Springs, a remarkable reserve in the shadow of Mount Kenya. Before sunrise, sitting quietly outside a rooftop tent, I listened as the landscape slowly came to life. A mysterious dove called constantly across the reserve, White-browed Sparrow joined the chorus, and hidden beneath it all were the voi...

Most people think it's an owl. It isn't. The first time I heard a Tawny Frogmouth was deep in Australia's Daintree Rainforest. Its haunting call rolled through the darkness like a distant engine, and when I finally found it, I was staring at what looked like a broken branch. Then it blinked. For this week's Patreon story, I share the remarkable tale of one of Australia's most extraordinary birds,...

There’s a bird in Scotland that never truly belonged there, yet somehow became part of the soul of the landscape. The Pheasant. Originally from Asia, introduced into the UK for one reason only… to be shot for sport. I lived for five years in Blair Atholl in the Scottish Highlands, where wealthy shooting parties would arrive every September 12th for the start of pheasant season. Men in tweed jacket...

Over a million seabirds. Albatross chicks scattered across the sand. Dolphins offshore. Monk seals resting on the beaches. One of the most alive places I have ever experienced. Those albatross chicks weren’t just being fed fish by their parents. They were being fed plastic. Bottle tops, lighters, fragments of our lives. Carried across the ocean and delivered to one of the most remote places on Ear...

There’s something about rain that most people miss. To many, it’s an inconvenience… something to escape from. To me, it’s music. Rain creates its own orchestra, each surface a different instrument. I’ve recorded it all over the world… in rainforests where the canopy turns it into layered percussion, in temperate forests where it softens into a gentle hush, on metal roofs where it becomes sharp and...

There are moments in life that quietly reshape you. Not with noise or drama… but with something subtle. Unexpected. For me, one of those moments came just outside the suburbs of Birmingham. I had travelled out toward the border of Wales searching for something I had only read about. A bird I had never heard before. The grasshopper warbler. When I finally heard it, I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t bi...

I’ve always loved eagles. Not just admired them… loved them. The first time I saw one was in Scotland in 1978, over Glencoe. A golden eagle riding the thermals above Rannoch Moor. It wasn’t flying… it was owning the sky. That moment never left me. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to record them across the world — from the reintroduced white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Rum, to bald eagles in Nort...

There was a time when you couldn’t look at the sky without hearing it. Not one bird… but many I remember lying on my back in a field as a boy, watching skylarks climb higher and higher until they disappeared from sight… but never from sound. The air itself was alive. A chorus with no beginning and no end. Today, that chorus is fading. In my lifetime, we’ve lost billions of birds. Not in some dista...

I have spent a lifetime listening. Not just hearing… but truly listening to the voice of the Earth. Because sound tells us things that our eyes cannot. A forest can still look whole… A river can still appear to flow… A landscape can seem untouched… But the truth is in the silence. The dipper no longer on the stream. The frogs missing from the marsh at dusk. The birds that once filled the forest… n...

I recently had an email questioning a bird I logged on Cornell’s eBird. The reviewer suggested the call I recorded was a Magnolia Warbler rather than the Red eyed Vireo I had listed. He explained that Magnolia Warblers can give a whiny call that sounds very similar to a vireo and also pointed out that Red eyed Vireos usually do not arrive in our coastal hammock habitat until late March. It was a t...

This is Martyn Stewart… with a life in sound from The Listening Planet. Recently I returned to England. Home. The place where everything began. But this time the journey was different. Someone had recommended me for an honour… an OBE. The Order of the British Empire. When I first heard the words, I honestly could not take it in. I kept thinking there must be some mistake. Awards like that are for...

Birds are not the only musicians in Earth’s orchestra. Amphibians, insects, mammals and marine life all play their part. But there is another section that moves me just as deeply. The sound of the planet itself. Wind. Rain. Ocean. Thunder. Geophony. I have recorded hurricanes named Andrew, Milton, Hellen and Dorian. Each one had its own personality. Its own voice. Standing in hurricane force winds...

When darkness falls most people think the world becomes quiet. But listen carefully. The night is speaking. Katydids in the trees. Crickets in the grass. Cicadas vibrating through the air. These are not background sounds. They are the living pulse of the planet, the voices of ecosystems in balance. For more than half a century I have listened to the natural world. I have heard thriving landscapes...

What is silence? For most people it means peace and quiet. But for me, silence is something very different. It is not the absence of sound, but the absence of life’s voices — the birds, the insects, the wild chorus we call biophony. True silence only exists in an anechoic chamber. What I seek instead is tranquility. A place where the Earth itself speaks. The rain falling through leaves. The wind m...

I want to share a small story with you. Many years ago, standing beside a quiet pond in the Wye Valley, I recorded my first reed warbler. A tiny bird hidden deep in the reeds, yet its voice filled the entire landscape with an endless cascade of buzzes, clicks, and song. I remember my tape running out while the bird continued, tireless, unstoppable. Even then, I knew I was witnessing something spec...