For those who want a more complete picture than that given in this earlier entry, here is the great Stanley Unwin to explain further. (Found via enthusiasm.)
Hope that's all straight now. On the subject of Stanley Unwin, I never realised that he was the star of a very peculiar Gerry Anderson Supermarionation series, The Secret Service. Apparently every week Father Stanley Unwin foiled someone's evil plan by talking nonsense, and sometimes taking the form of a puppet.
I came across this little sound piece called IF on the WNYC Radiolab podcast. Australian sound artist Sherre DeLys takes us into the delightful world of Andrew, an imaginative boy at the Westmead Children's Hospital, as he speculates on scuttlefish, crocodiles and problems with drawing. Like a lot of the work on Radiolab, the result is somewhere between music and speech – and short but extremely sweet.
You can hear more of Sherre DeLys’s work at Ubuweb.
Mystery humming noises have plagued the inhabitants of various locations over the years, from Taos, New Mexico, to Largs in Scotland to Bristol. Explanations have varied, often involving the electrical grid, power plants or military experiments. But in the case of Sausalito, California, where a community living on houseboats was driven mad by a persisent hum for several summers, as described in this great BBC radio series The Sound of Life: The Underwater Chorus, the mystery was finally solved when biologists decided it was caused by a fish. The drone caused by a gathering of male midshipman fish all competing for mates is truly uncanny:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Not only do they hum, but they’re also bioluminescent. You can hear more of their sounds here
Did you know that glowworms glow green and fireflies glow yellow? And both are beetles. Radio 4 has a fascinating little documentary about bioluminenscence and nature’s “lamp of love” – part of a series called Nature’s Magic, which also covers glowing jellyfish, electric rays and flies’ eyes. Listen again here. Thanks to Speechification for pointing the way to the BBC nature department’s impressive archive.
If you've always wanted to know what your name sounds like translated into nightingale language, this site gives you the chance. Via Metafilter.
Lucky Fed by Birds was given an Edirol R-09 recorder for Christmas and so is able to bring you back the authentic sounds of coastal Norfolk in winter.
Firstly, the sound of someone learning to use their new recording equipment:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The noises of the marshes – wind, water, birds and the crunch of an approaching pensioner:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
More wind, this time in boat masts:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
And a log fire:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The gold clutch bag thoughtfully provided as a case also turned out to be ideal for transporting this find back to London in one piece:
If you nip over to Bluebell FM, you can hear Bluebell's essential predictions for 2008. Don't start the year without them...
Apologies - it seems there's been a problem with the RSS feed which means it hasn't been updating with the latest episodes, but that's all fixed now, I hope.
You are cordially invited to the grand opening of Bluebell.fm - the home of robot folk tales. If you like Fed by Birds, or are generally fond of enjoying yourself, then this is the place for you.
Time: Now
Place: Here
This starling seems too articulate to be genuine, but apparently starlings can be big talkers: here is a website devoted to starling chat. Theirs sound a bit frightening to me, whispering endearments in a sinister way. Not sure I could live with that. The starlings outside our house just make a lot of electronic squeaks and squawks, possibly from being forced to listen to far too much bleepy music.
We are the number one appreciators of birdsong – but sometimes it's nice to hear a wolf howl. Or growl, or even a sorrowful wolf chorus. More sounds and links here.
The Language of Birds is a section of the British Library sound archive where you can find out that 'There are only two species of bird that use sound to convey to man the unique message: "Follow me and I'll lead you to a bees' nest" ' and listen to them doing it (Windows Media Player required). The cunning black-throated honeyguide flies to the nearest village, makes a sound like a beehive, and lures a villager to come and open up the hive for it. Then they divide the spoils between them. A rare example of man and bird working in total harmony.
You can also listen to Sparkie Williams, the 'most famous British budgerigar', trained by Mrs. Mattie Williams of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who had a six-year working life as a character actor (two accents: "Geordie" and "refined"). Here he is reciting "Jack and Jill' in a voice which I would guess is the refined version: sounds a bit like a middle-aged woman from Newcastle playing a polite Dalek.
Records to teach your underachieving canary to sing properly – as collected on this site, which also has mp3s of canaries singing with marimba bands, crow-calling records ("the trick is to create as much of a riotous bedlam as possible") and a stern woman telling you how to train your parakeet to talk.
