The listening planet

Why this wildlife expert is making his archive public
By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent

Recording animals in their natural habitat is not a job for those who lack patience.

Capturing just 20 seconds of a songbird's chirrup, or an elk's bugle, or a kangaroo's chortle often requires hours of stillness and solitude.

It's a craft that Birmingham-born sound recordist Martyn Stewart has perfected over the last 55 years.

In that time, he's built up one of the largest private collections of natural sound in the world. Comprising 30,000 hours of material, it includes recordings of 3,500 bird species, alongside countless mammals, insects, amphibians and reptiles, as well as soundscapes of the Serengeti, the Arctic and Chernobyl, 10 years after the nuclear reactor meltdown.

At least four of the species he's recorded are now extinct in the wild, including the northern white rhinoceros and the Panamanian tree frog.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59404975