The Listener Podcast

[PREVIEW] The Pheasant.

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 jackets with Labradors by their side blasting these extraordinary birds from the sky. I’ve always hated the term “game bird.” They are living creatures, not targets. The strange thing is, over the years the pheasant became part of the soundscape for me. Their abrupt rasping calls echoing across woodland edges at dawn and dusk became woven into the atmosphere of the Highlands. And yes… I got into trouble many times. Before the shooting season started, I used to quietly release birds from the holding pens. I was warned repeatedly by estate workers and gamekeepers, but I could never stand the thought of these magnificent birds being raised simply to be killed for entertainment. I can still remember opening those pens in the half-light of morning and hearing the explosion of wings as they disappeared into the forest mist. To many people they were trophies. To me they were part of the living voice of the wild. One more sound that deserved to exist. www.thelisteningplanet.com [https://www.thelisteningplanet.com]

[PREVIEW] Plastic and Midway

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 Earth. Their stomachs full, but starving. That’s the thing about pollution. It doesn’t respect distance. It doesn’t need permission. It arrives quietly, even in paradise. Right now, in places like Ukraine and across the Middle East, we’re seeing a different kind of pollution. Oil depots burning. Refineries hit. Tankers attacked. Thick black smoke rising into the atmosphere. Toxic chemicals seeping into soil, rivers, and oceans. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of emissions… but the numbers don’t tell the real story. The real story is what disappears. The birds that stop singing. The insects that never return. The silence that slowly replaces life. Because the same system that fuels war… fuels the plastic that ends up inside an albatross chick on Midway. It’s all connected. Midway is not just a remote island. It’s a warning. If we can’t keep a place like that clean… what hope do we have anywhere else? The question is simple. Are we still listening? give a black and white line-art drawing Edit

Rain symphony

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 urgent, and across lakes and oceans where it melts into something almost hypnotic. And then there are palm leaves… They don’t just catch the rain, they release it in bursts… sudden cascades of sound that feel alive. Give me a storm, thunder rolling, skies opening… and you’ll find me outside, soaked through, headphones on, completely at peace. Because rain isn’t just weather. It’s rhythm. It’s texture. It’s nature reminding us that even the simplest things can be extraordinary… if we just stop and listen. Most people run from the rain. I walk straight into it. #TheListeningPlanet #Soundscapes #Rain #NatureSounds #FieldRecording #Biophony #Geophony #ListenToTheEarth Do line art Edit do line art of a microphone in the rainforest Edit

Grasshopper warbler

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 birdsong. Not in any way I understood at the time. It was a reel. A continuous mechanical trill, like an insect caught in a loop. My instinct was to look down into the grass, not up for a bird. It confused me. Drew me in. Was it a call… or a song? That moment changed something in me. Because suddenly, the natural world wasn’t what I thought it was. The neat categories disappeared. Birds didn’t just sing like birds. Insects didn’t just sound like insects. Everything blurred. Years later, here in Florida, I heard that same deception again. The grasshopper sparrow. Even the name carries the confusion. And yet this time, there was something else attached to the sound. A weight. The Florida subspecies is critically endangered. That faint, insect-like buzz… is disappearing. And it made me think back to that first moment in the meadow. How innocent it was. How full of discovery. I didn’t know then that some of these sounds would become rare. That one day, hearing them would feel like holding onto something fragile. There are other birds that cross that boundary. The savannah sparrow. The soft ticking trill of the dark-eyed junco. But none of them compare to that first encounter. Because that was the moment I stopped just hearing nature… …and started listening. 🌍 WHY THIS MATTERS When sounds disappear, we don’t always notice straight away. But they are often the first sign that something is wrong. Sound is the barometer of the natural world. And right now… it’s telling us a story we can’t afford to ignore. www.thelisteningplanet.com [https://www.thelisteningplanet.com]

Eagles

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 North America, and even the extraordinary harpy eagle deep in the forests of Costa Rica. There are around 60 species of eagle on this planet. Sixty different expressions of power, silence, and survival. And here’s the thing… If an eagle is still there, it means everything beneath it is still holding together. The rivers still have fish. The forests still breathe. The land is still alive. They are not just birds… they are a sign that the system still works. And yet, one of my favourite things about them is this… For all that size and power, their voice is completely unexpected. Not the dramatic scream you hear in films (that’s usually a red-tailed hawk). The real call of an eagle is far more delicate… almost surprising. But don’t let that fool you. Those talons would remind you very quickly who you’re dealing with. I’ve spent my life recording the true voices of the natural world, because reality is always more interesting than the version we invent. And every time I see an eagle, I feel the same thing I did back in 1978… Wonder. Because as long as eagles are still in the sky, there is still something left worth protecting. www.thelisteningplanet.com [https://www.thelisteningplanet.com] #TheListeningPlanet #Eagles #Nature #Wildlife #SoundOfNature #Biodiversity #Conservation