294 Dawn in Shelve Wood Shropshire with cuckoo

About this episode

The episode captures the serene sounds of dawn in Shelve Wood, Shropshire, highlighting the natural acoustics of the forest.

The moment we entered Shelve Wood we knew it was a perfect place to record. Shropshire is sparsely populated. There's only one B road in the Shelve Wood area. The country lanes carry little traffic, and on the day we were on-location the skies were very often empty of aircraft. These qualities are highly valuable because they allow the delicate natural sound in the environment to reach your eardrums unaffected. Hearing the leaves of one city tree hushing in the wind is a nice thing to experience, but hearing thousands of trees all murmuring together across a huge reverberant natural space is an aural experience that brings nature connection on a completely different level. Shelve Wood is a forest of diverse flora and fauna with mixed fir and deciduous trees. The ecosystem extends over approximately five hundred acres. The ground beneath the trees is intensely absorbent to sound, layer upon layer of fallen pine needles and leaves that must have lain untrodden by the feet of anything larger than the smallest of woodland creatures for decades. It's the physical properties of the trees, their solid trunks, their branches and complex leaf systems that convert the energy of the wind…

People in this episode

Host: Hugh Huddy

Topics covered

• nature
• sound recording
• dawn chorus
• flora and fauna
• environment

Keywords

• dawn chorus
• Shelve Wood
• Shropshire
• nature sounds
• environmental recording

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Shelve Wood, Shropshire

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