Radio Lento podcast

270 Soundscene from Northward Hill Nature Reserve featuring a nightingale

Whilst out along the Kent side of the Thames Estuary on Saturday, aiming to capture the sound of skylarks and reeds, we met a walker with a very friendly border terrier. She told us there was talk of a nightingale not too far away at RSPB's Northward Hill Nature Reserve. We aren't strictly speaking wildlife recordists, the Lento box is designed like a wide angle camera to capture panoramic landscape sounds, but we thought it might be worth a visit to the reserve to see if we might be able to find it.

Unusually for us public transport devotees, we were able to travel on to Northward Hill easily thanks to a magnificent Lento supporter. He'd driven us and the Lento box out from Brockley station in South East London to explore another corner of the Hoo Peninsula, and was keen to visit the reserve. We didn't feel hugely confident about actually hearing a nightingale. They are the kinds of birds you don't expect to find on demand.

We rolled into the reserve's car park and quickly headed down into the woodland. We descended a rough flight of bare earth steps under the dark shadows of dense tree canopy, surrounded by glorious birdsong. All the usual suspects of course, familiar if you regularly listen to Lento - chif chaf, blackbirds, black caps, jackdaws, robins, various others plus trusty wood pigeons. 

After turning right and proceeding further into the woods over a few hundred yards our ears pricked up. I found myself saying "and there it is" before I had even properly heard it. We continued for a few steps and, fortunately, there it was again, this time much more clearly, and without doubt a nightingale only about thirty yards away! Up on the tripod went the Lento box. I turned it to face the sound of the nightingale, and pressed record, bathed in the rich tapestry of spring woodland birds, coming from all around us. 

Here's what the box captured. It's only twenty minutes. The passage of time is from around 5pm on 24th May. There are some people vaguely audible and a horse (louder) somewhere to left of scene. A road must pass the reserve too because some level of vehicle noise is distantly audible, but not so much as to spoil the overall effect. We capture whole landscapes from one fixed position, so what you hear is the nightingale just as we heard it from standing on the path and facing into the reserve. Wildlife recordists find ways to post their microphones very close to their subjects and as such we are all used to hearing nightingales proportionately far louder than anything else. In reality though these are not birds that like being approached, so few people can ever actually hear in-person, the bird singing as loudly as they do in specially focused recordings. 

With a pair of headphones though this episode provides a realistic woodland soundscape with a nightingale almost dead centre of scene. You should be able quite easily to hear it between the other birds which are spread out to the left and to the right of scene. Listen out for a wonderfully special coincidence that happens a few times where a distant cuckoo comes into earshot too. It is pretty well dead centre, behind the nightingale. 

There must be a farm nearby because several cockerels crow towards the end. The whole scene is in fact very busy, and whether a connection or not, I note how the nightingale seems to become more active when the chif chaf is in full voice. Coincidence, or not?

This bonus episode is shared with big thanks to our trusty supporter and to the dog walker we met. 

269 Night crickets distant waves - Folkestone Warren (sleep safe)

At this spot, high up on The Warren, in the dead of night, live the crickets. They're everywhere. Stridulating, like tiny minute hands etching the moments, of this night's time passing. Crisp. Unwitnessed. They're probably dark bush crickets.

The Lento box records the scene alone, on a warm night last August. Tied to a very difficult tree. Difficult because it was very spiny. And off the path, part way down a precipitous drop. Why not an easier tree? Because of the view. This tree looks out over the valley, over all the tree tops, towards the hushing sea, far below. 

Time passes. Somewhere in the valley, an ocean breeze lows in. Shifts a bank of trees into a state of gentle rustling. Countless crickets mark the moments. Then from nowhere a nocturnal train materialises in the bottom of the valley, right of scene. It glides across, and into the left horizon. Further and further. Until finally, it dissolves, and becomes just another part of this place's subtle, and natural murmurings. Perhaps a hedgehog is moving in the bushes. And a hint of a plane, heading south east towards France.

* This 50 minute section is from a 48 hour recording we made in Folkestone Warren last August. It captures a deeply peaceful scene of this green and tangled place, by the sea, and the endlessly breaking waves of the Channel. Listen carefully (with headphones or airpods) and you may catch sound of a lower pitched cricket to left of scene. We still aren't sure what exactly it is, but it sounds like the cicadas in old films from 1950s America.

268 A wild ocean above ancient tree stumps

Pett in Sussex. A 'small peaceful seaside village'. Here you can visit a little timber chapel on the beach with an open door to a kitchen. You can take a seat, absorb the atmosphere, then make yourself a cup of tea if you like, choose a book from the shelves and drop your donation into the honesty box. Before heading out to explore the wild pebble beach, crashing waves and sea defences. All perfect for blowing away the cobwebs.
 
But this is one of those places that makes you think too. Yes there's the village, the chapel, the wonderfully exposed coast path and beach, but there are other significant things too. Things that make the past resonate. 

The end of the Royal Military Canal culminates here. A 28 mile inland channel linking Pett Level to Hythe. It was built as a defence against the possible invasion by Napoleon. Above on the hill a pillbox, a relic from WWII, looking out to sea.

Back more. Back and back. Far into the mists of time. Not old history, not human history. Ancient history. The Pleistocene. Before the last ice age when there were no humans about to even know this coastal place exists. Or to witness its wild crashing waves. Dinosaur footprints left in the rock.

At low tide the stumps of ancient trees can be seen. One day we'll travel back at low tide, and hopefully capture the sound of the waves as they break over these ancient stumps of oak, birch and hazel. And as we set up the microphones, we'll imagine ourselves deep in a forest, immersed between hushing trees and echoing birdsong.

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Come with us on a walk on this February day. See the sites around Pett. 

267 Hidden dell at night (sleep safe)

This week we're staying on the uplands of rural Derbyshire to hear a passage of time from the dead of night. We captured it last month, from a location very near to last week's episode,

About half a mile upstream, high above the valley pastures where the sheep live, hides a watery dell. It's shrouded under tangled trees, who no doubt thrive on the plentiful supply of water. An iron age track slopes steeply down before fording the stream. Beyond the stream is an area of dark moorland forest. We've recorded here many times over the years. It's a location that possesses richly varying sound-feels, not just from season to season, but often from hour to hour.
 
Overflights from aircraft heading into Manchester's Ringway Airport heavily impact the natural soundscape here. To get round this we leave the lento box out recording for very long periods of time. When the flight path moves, the sky clears of human-made noise, and we are able to hear just the natural environment again.

The Lento box records through the quiet hours of the night. Tied to a tree only a few yards from where the track fords the stream. To right of scene a cool pool of moorland water shallows onto stones over which people have crossed with their animals and carts for countless centuries. Centre of scene the stream flows down into another pool, before continuing on its way down into the valley. The trees, now in leaf, create an acoustic space inside which the sound of the stream reflects. Through long listening, the wide spatial presence of the valley beyond can also be heard. Or perhaps we should say felt. Valleys, from an aural perspective, transcend any obvious aural description.

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266 On upland pastures

Left  of scene, a steep uninhabited valley, shrouded under dense woodland. Right of scene, rough pastures and grass meadows sloping gradually up, towards a distant horizon. Centre, a silvery glimpse of the moorland stream that's flowed down into this valley for as long as rain began to fall. 

Spring has arrived. The valley is verdant green, and alive with song birds, sheep and lambs. The air is so still, and soft. The scents of hawthorn and cow parsley rise on sun warmed eddies. Bees, from plant to plant, appear. Then disappear. Then appear again. Hovering. Manoeuvring. Speeding away. A lone goose in the mid-distance, is flying gracefully up the valley. Is following the stream. Its calls echo, across the vast empty space. 

How over time the sounds of this valley form naturally into a portrait. A spatial depiction, of life on an upland pasture. Clean. Fresh. Uncluttered. Unconcerned. And it is there. And with headphones, and a bit of time sat still, we can be there too.  
 
* This segment is from a long-form recording we made of this valley several years ago in the Peak District. We visited again only a few weeks ago, we can say things sound very much the same on the ground. What is changing though is an increased intensity of air travel. The skies are noisier now, preventing us from being able to share more recent recordings. 

265 Low tide on the causeway (sleep safe)

Last week we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two overnight recordings, both looking out towards the island from Bigbury-on-Sea. The island is connected to the mainland by a sand causeway. This passage of time is from the second unaccompanied overnight recording, midnight to 1am. 

The darkness is solid. A landscape only sparsely inhabited. Low tide was several hours ago, but you can hardly tell that the sea has started to come in. Weather conditions are extremely mild with wind speeds of only 1 to 2 knots, gusting 5 to 6. After the first few minutes, the wind that's been audibly rustling the leaves of the palm tree holding the Lento recording box, drops to virtually nothing. 

The stillness reveals an aural expanse of true pristine quiet. The beach, stretching from far left to far right. The sand causeway, directly ahead, leading up onto the island. The sea, a split view with crashing waves audible both on the left side and the right side of scene, with the island a silent space in the middle. It's very rare we discover a landscape that possesses this level of peace. Such quiet enables the most delicate and the most spatial qualities of the aural environment to be perceived. A scene of an island, asleep, between two seas, at low tide.

264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)

Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it'd be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly sleep through the night. 

Hearing this scene though, is only possible by staying up and getting very tired and wet. But this is where the Lento box comes in. By leaving it out all night to do the listening and capturing, in natural spatial detail, we can then re-experience the sound of time passing through a pair of headphones or Airpods. It's a much more comfortable way to appreciate what a place sounded like, when there was no one around to witness it.

If you've listened to Lento before, you'll know we usually capture the sound of falling rain from underneath a large tarpaulin we have stretched across our back yard. This time we decided to try something new. Right at the end of our little garden there are lots of plants and shrubs huddled against an old brick wall. Along the top of the wall is a wisteria plant that's got very big over the years. So many different types of leaves, we thought, to catch the rain drops as they fall. Just before midnight, and as the first rain began to fall, we placed the Lento box on a short tripod directly underneath the wisteria, and left it to record. Water was already pouring down through the leaves. A test for the box's weatherproofing, we hopefully muttered to ourselves, as we closed the back door and shuffled off to bed.

* The recording location was north east London in July 2024. We have carefully chosen a segment of time where the least traffic noise and human activity is audible. Some micro-editing was needed though to ensure unavoidable noises such as heavy raindrops landing directly onto the microphone baffles and the occasional crump of cars rolling over local speed bumps have been softened out. Some planes overfly but they are very soft and gentle in tone. We have tagged this episode sleep safe due to the minimal impact of these non-natural sounds.

263 Wild open coastal reserve

Sat back, looking onto Rye Harbour nature reserve. There, to the ear, is the sea. From here it's out of sight, somewhere below the long shingle ridge. From this point across the reserve, it could to the ear be an aural sunrise. A wall of natural energy, lighting up the horizon with clean, white, spatialised noise.

On the intervening  land, stray gusts of wind swish swathes of sea grasses. Press whispily through thin wire fences. Lift circling seagulls even higher. Billow shapeless banks of cloud, from left to right of the gradually illuminating sky, water and air. 

In such an exposed panoramically vast space, come the timeless calls of sea birds. Animated brush strokes on a canvas that stretches from far left, to far right of scene. Each stroke, is an individual. Each, a living thing. A soul, for whom this wild open place is home.

* This early morning hour is from an overnight recording we made last month from the edge of the nature reserve at Rye Harbour, East Sussex. It captures the sound-feel of wide open emptiness that you get when out and about on the reserve. It's also a rich source of naturally spatialised blue-grey and dark grey noise, produced by the sea and shaped by uninterrupted expanses of gently contoured shingled land. 

** Lento is 5 today! Happy birthday to us!
Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting us over five years.
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262 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sheep sleep safe)

We found our way to record this remote location late at night, and in near total darkness. A sheltered dell, with a fresh running stream. Earlier in the day, when everything was bathed in bright grey light, we'd walked through this secluded place on our way down from West Quantoxhead, and decided it might be a perfect spot for the Lento box to make a long overnight recording.

There's a branch just above your right shoulder, my partner quietly calls up from below. Can you use that to lever yourself up? The height I'd just gained had markedly improved the spatial clarity of the wrilling stream, so just a little higher, I thought. We really need to be able to properly hear the full width and detail of the water, as it flows through the dell. How still this place is. How perfectly balanced it sounds, nestled within the wildness of this wide open West Somerset landscape.

To reach the branch I had to work my way through a mass of prickled twigs in the dark while holding the Lento box in one hand. After some not insignificant effort, the branch, and my elbow, connect. I haul up, wedge in, and tie the box onto the trunk. To be sure this spot meets the criteria we've evolved over the years, I try to match my head with the box, and hold completely still. Listening. Absorbing the scene. Slightly adjusting the angle of the mics, so they can capture as much as possible of what it is I'm actually hearing. Good, I quietly call down, this is it. 

We head back to where we are staying, leaving the Lento box to record alone, non-stop through the night. Without us or indeed anyone else about to witness, time passes. Looking down from the tree, the stream wrills, and the landscape murmurs its nocturnal murmurings. Sheep can be heard, sometimes moving vaguely, through the dark. And one seems to come to rest beneath the tree holding the mics. From time to time it makes the softest, most gentle noise, that a sheep can surely make.

261 Midnight in Rye

Twelve strikes the clock, of St Mary's Church in Rye, East Sussex. Midnight. A sound that for anyone left awake, opens a new page. It's a new day, captured by the Lento box perched high above the churchyard, one night in mid-February.

The new day reads like this. The gnarled limb of a winter tree beside the churchyard creaks against an undulating wind. The flagpole at the top of the belfry tower, rattles, like the mast of some windswept sailing ship. 

The sky is heavy with cloud and dark. Coastal air ruffles and catches in the rooftops of huddled 14th century cottages. They look gathered in around the church, like a solid congregation. Time passes. Banks of wind rise, then subside. Creaks and rattles punctuate the night air. And the Quarterboy faintly chime out the quarters. 

St Mary's has a good clean bell. It echoes off the huddled houses beautifully. Sonorous tones, that seem to ring out with the same golden grey hues of the stones from which this ancient coastal town is built. The skittering leaves blowing and the almost too faint silvery ding dongs of the Quarterboys. 

* We captured this sound-view of St Mary's Church Rye last month on a freezing cold windswept night. We rested the Lento box on the outer ledge of a second floor window that looked over the churchyard and straight at the church itself (with a chain to stop it falling). Do let us know if you can hear the quarters being struck, they are subtle but just about audible.

** Explore more from Rye. Listen to the sound inside the belfry in episode 200. That was a windy night too. 

*** We're building up to our 5th birthday. Watch this space! 

260 Early spring in the Derbyshire hills

What a long-form sound landscape recording of the Derbyshire hills reveals, is space, weather, and birds. 
 
A buzzard. Mistle thrush. Song thrush. Great tit. Geese. Wren. Robin. Jackdaw. Pheasant. Black cap. All present in their different ways. Buffeted by strong spring breezes under grey skies. 
    
Ahead, down the fields, mid-left of scene, the rushing river fills the valley with soft white noise. Its sound is quite subtle, yet so present. So wide. And so constant. Over the thirty five years we've known this place, through all weathers, and all seasons, it's the river that's never changed.

* Over the years we've shared many sound landscapes from this rural location in the Derbyshire hills. This until now unpublished segment comes from a 14 hour recording we made in mid-February 2022. We haven't been able to get there this month, so we're sharing this audio as a reminder of how the valley sounds now the spring is nearly here, as morning gets going.

259 Night rain under a large tarpaulin (sleep safe)

Sometimes, when persistent rain is forecast overnight, we place the Lento box out in the back garden on a long battery to capture the sound. Falling rain is always enchanting, especially at night when the city is asleep. 

We leave a large tarpaulin stretched across the yard to catch the raindrops as they fall. We position the microphone box centrally, angled up, so as the rain falls at random across the 4 metre by 3 metre surface. It captures a widely spatial sound-image of the rain. 

Somewhere very high up in the clouds, there is a special place. It's directly above the tarpaulin. The droplets that form here will not fall unwitnessed, as rain normally does. The droplets will instead fall down into this episode. To soothe and calm many ears. This night rain. Under a large tarpaulin. 

258 Tidal breakers on Winchelsea beach (high definition spatial sound)

It is almost high tide on Winchelsea Beach. Old timbers, buried in the shingle berm, point up into the hazy winter sky. You scrunch over the stones. Rest your hands on their sturdy weatherworn tops. And begin to take in the scene.  

Clean sea air cuffs against your face. It smells faintly of salt, of sea wetted rock. The beach rakes sharply down into bright white froth. Then just blue-grey, out to the horizon. Nobody is about. Only distant shapes, of coasting sea birds.   

Each wave comes and breaks onto the shingle. Some roll in straight. Others from the side. Some cross. Some break twice. Some rise slowly up, overbalance and crash in one thunderous crump onto the hard shingle. Others race furtively towards the land, as if they can't wait to meet it. Together, over time, they paint a picture in sound, of this mid February beach, under a wide open, winter hazy sky. 

* We took this sound capture of the beach between Winchelsea and Rye Harbour a few days ago. The scene captures the weight and detail of the tidal breakers, and is best "seen" through headphones or Airpods. A little propeller plane flies over, and almost at the end a curlew can briefly be heard flying from right to left of scene, towards the Rye Harbour nature reserve.

257 Dawn birds of The Kielder Forest

This spatial sound-scene of dawn birdsong was captured from deep within the Kielder Forest, a huge wilderness of fir trees in the far north east of England almost at the border with Scotland. 

Along with most all of our 257 episodes, this audio was produced by leaving the Lento box to record alone on-location, over a long span of time. By listening back to the captured audio we pick out sections that best convey the aural richness and presence of what it was like to be present in that place. These sections then become the episodes.

What you hear sounds strikingly real. We designed the Lento box to capture sound binaurally, in an unprocessed and realistic way. It lets us experience that aural sense of being present in the landscape. Ear-witnesses to the authentic passing of time.

This unaccompanied recording method means we can "hear there", but not "be there". Being there affects animals, birds and insects. By not physically being there they can behave normally. They move about, communicate, sing, forage, free of being alarmed or inhibited. Thanks to the Lento box, we are able to witness what it sounds like to be in their world.  

This recording was made last May, amongst tall fir trees growing beside a rough track that runs into the forest, East of the reservoir. Willow warblers are most prominent, along with wrens, song thrush and other woodland birds. A cuckoo is just audible at 15 minutes.  At 38 minutes two heavy creatures lumber by and scramble into the cover of the trees. Hearing how they traverse the space reveals just how careful they are being to avoid detection. 

One of the main reasons we travelled up to the Kielder Forest last year was to capture the evocative sound of wind moving through vast areas of fir trees. While the wind was not particularly strong at the time of this recording, the tall fir trees can still be heard in the wind, and producing that richly restorative and evocative hushing sound.

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256 Gulls and emptiness along the Creel Path

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The Creel Path, used by generations of fisherman to get from Coldingham to the coastal fishing village of St Abbs in the far south east of Scotland, is a thousand years old. It crosses an exposed coastal landscape, with rough pastures lying either side. Over the last century the addition of a telegraph wire, strung out along timber poles, may be one of the only significant changes to have been made to this narrow stony path. 
 
The Lento box is tied to a squat broad leaved tree along the path. It's facing east into a wide open field, and beyond that is the sea. Mid left of scene about a third of a mile away, a sense of the waves can be heard rushing into the harbour of St Abbs. To right of scene fields stretch inland with distant sheep and late season lambs. As time passes the engine of a fishing boat softly thrums the air. Gulls almost constantly wheel and circle across the emptiness of the sky. A quiet sky, free of human-made noise. A sky sounding like it must have always sounded, over centuries. 

* This sound capture is from an overnight recording we made in the summer of 2022 when we last visited St Abbs. This section follows on from the nocturnal scene captured in episode 208. Now morning has broken, and the gusting wind that swept over the path in the night hours has settled. Gentler gusts occasionally blow through the tree, revealing its presence to the listener. Rain clouds are coming, but for now the air sounds bright and clear.