But customers often ask; what is the difference between these recordings - surely a beach is a beach? So this is a good opportunity to discuss the variety of moods that nature presents on our wild coastlines.

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This unique lowland area in the northwest of India lies between the southern edge of the Thar desert and the Arabian Sea. With each monsoon, floodwaters flowing south get backed up here, creating a vast lake often less than a metre deep on which local villagers go fishing. In the dry season it becomes the moonscape we were now traversing. Even in the driest months, the Rann has RAMSAR-listed perenial wetlands, a refuge for huge numbers of waterfowl. Also dotted amongst this remote vastness were isolated ‘islands’ of thornscrub, known as phets, and it was to one of these that we were being driven in the predawn.

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What is the most beautiful songbird in the world?

If we mean ‘musical to our ears’, then surely one of our favourites would be the Malabar Whistling Thrush, Myophonus horsfieldii, of India. Also known as the ‘whistling schoolboy’, this bird has the most haunting and tuneful of songs - it is indeed like overhearing someone whistling to themselves as they walk along a jungle path.

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The Painted Button Quail, Turnix varia, is a native quail of the drier eucalypt forests of eastern and southern Australia. Whilst they are widespread, they are quite uncommon, and their camouflage plumage makes actually seeing them in the bush a rare treat.

Our first encounter with them was fifteen years ago, whilst sound recording for one of our early nature albums; ‘A Morning in the Australian Bush’. In the Capertee Valley of NSW I recorded what I thought to be a pigeon, giving a series of resonant booming calls from low bushes. We didn’t actually see the bird, but it sounded so like the Common Bronzewing pigeon, that it never occurred to me to question. It was only a year later, after we had completed and published this album, that a naturalist friend confirmed that what we’d recorded was actually a Painted Button Quail.

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It is quite common for them to do this on well-illuminated moonlit evenings. Not only Magpies, but other birds such as Willy Wagtails, are well-known for this behaviour. What is interesting with Mapgies is that they have quite a different call nocturnally than their usual day-time calls.

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Several years ago, Sarah and I journeyed to the Australian outback, hoping to record the calls of Cockatiels.

We were not having any luck finding them (they are highly nomadic birds, and seemed to have departed the area a few weeks previously). However we did discover something unexpected - a group of ephemeral lakes in the desert, filled with water for the first time in 40 years.

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Sarah and I have received many emails from concerned friends and customers, inquiring whether we’re well and safe. We are, thankfully, and we really appreciate your thoughts and concern. There have been no fires around our area, but it has been a terrible time for some people. The nearest fire to us has been in Bendigo, an hour’s drive to our north, where 2 people lost their lives and 50 homes were destroyed in a freak blaze, not in bushland but through the inner suburbs.

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Recording the sounds of nature is an unusual occupation, and we often find that people misunderstand the nature of our work.

Here are our Top Ten popular misconceptions about nature recordings!

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Last spring, Sarah and I undertook a cycling journey through the outback of NSW. We conceived the trip as an opportunity to see whether we could do our recording field trips by bicycle.

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This may seem a little gratuitous considering the economic uncertainty in the world right now, but we are actually quite positive. Not just in the sense of ‘wait and see, things will gradually improve’, but because it is a time of opportunity for some really exciting changes.

From what we understand about the underlying causes of the current economic crisis, this one won’t simply go away in time. Environmental problems and social injustices have become serious enough, but the real problem is that our economic system has seriously run out of ways of wringing every last bit of profit out of everything and everyone. There is nowhere to turn in the quest for a return to a ‘growth economy’.

Now we need to create a sustainable economy, one that values people, communities, nature, and the good things in life. And as government and corporations haven’t a clue, the initiative is going to have to come from ordinary people. So we hope that 2009 sees a growing optimism about what humanity can achieve.

To get you going in a positive groove, we’d like to recommend you view the 20 minute video by Annie Leonard entitled ‘The Story of Stuff’.

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