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| Chasing Coccoloba Leaves, Storm's A Coming |
#3 of 6; "Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in the Bog"
17" x 16" x 2" live edge Eastern Red cedar slab (Juniperus virginiana). This piece is number 3 of 6 pieces in the Discovering Florida Seep Head Bog collection set. Fire torch, oil pigment & resin. |
| Florida Native Bog Plants 7 the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
17" x 15" x 2" live edge Eastern Red cedar slab (Juniperus virginiana). This piece is number 2 of 6 pieces in the Discovering Florida Seep Head Bog collection set. Fire torch, oil pigment & resin.
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| Oil, fire & resin on Eastern Red Cedar #2 of 6, 15" x 17" x 2" |
Florida native plants & wildflowers included in this piece are; fruiting Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria), White Topped Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia leucophylla), Bog Buttons ( Lachnocaulon anceps), Florida cooters, (Pseudemys floridana floridana), Bidens mitis (Small fruit beggarticks), Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), Xyris floridana (Florida yellow-eyed grass), Marsh rosegentian (Sabatia dodecandra), Mama Mockingbird with eggs - which really are often bright speckled blue- (Mimus polyglottus).
When in studio inspirations from years of swamp & forest exploration envelope me and I am transported to the most remote areas of our native ecosystems where the art becomes reality. This is the real place called heaven.
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| Into the Saw Palmetto dominated pine flatwoods to the marsh waterline where I'll set up recorders for overnight audio collection |
Set out recorders last night in the refuge (I've a scientific Special Use Permit to do so) for overnight recording.
The St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge is amazingly beautiful. Went back out before sunrise to retrieve the recorders.
Field Recording in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Kevin Songer
Here are some photos of hiking out to where I had the Sonys placed.
| Field Recording in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Kevin Songer |
The second photo is how I attach the recorder to a tree or shrub, in two dry bags (one inside the other) and then the two diurnal microphones covered with fuzzy windshields.
| Field Recording in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Kevin Songer |
Be sure to check out the fourth photo where a reptile was following me.
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| Alligator following me while Field Recording in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Kevin Songer |
Sometimes wildlife think the fuzzy windshields are big bugs and bite at them but spit the fuzzies back out pretty quickly. I can often hear the 'blah-meh' on the recorder afterwards, lol.
| Field Recording in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Kevin Songer |
I know I have captured some pretty spectacular audio of a marsh wren, Cistothorus palustris, last night.
Will be posting audio on my Soundwave page and here once processed. We live on an amazing planet.
Nature is teaching me so much about life, healing and art.
One hour audio clip of a Green Tree Frog chorus (Hyla cinera) along the banks of Headquarter's Pond in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Occasional Pig Frog calls are interspersed throughout the Green Tree Frog choruses.
Nature languages possess many important survival, health and community qualities. Listening to the languages of nature can bring us humans closer to our evolutionary roots, heal our hypertension and stress and open many doors of adventure and opportunity.
We humans have long forgotten how to listen to what nature is telling us. Enjoy this hour of these aquatic frogs as they chorus together.
Bioacoustics and nature audio art.
Pig frog calls along the banks of Headquarters Pond in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. June 6, 2021 8pm-9pm.
Bioacoustic & audio art from the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.
One hour evening bird, frog and wildlife calls. Bathe yourself in the sounds of Florida's nature for health!
'Florida Burning Bush', Rhododendron austrinum. Mixed media 56" x 42" original. NFT available.
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| Florida Flame Azalea, Rhododendron austrinum, #NFT by Kevin Songer |
This particular sketch took about three weeks to do and will be available soon on Fine Art America and Rarible.
The practice of deep listening has revealed to me dimensions of nature I never before imagined existed.
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| Deep Listening, Recording the Languages of Nature |
Along with nature's colors and textures, deep listening collaterally has created vibrant imagined images of nature art for my studio's work. More importantly though, deep listening to the languages of nature has also reduced much of the stress typical to everyday life and increased feelings of satisfaction and happiness.
Focused listening to the different nature dialects around us can offer many health benefits. Over eons our human brains evolved an ability to grow new cells and create fresh neurons. Science has documented that learning new human languages is one way to stimulate brain cell growth. Careful or focused listening is usually the first step in learning a foreign language.
With routine exposure to new words and speech patterns our brains over time begin to organize these sounds into neurological patterns that can be quickly accessed, recognized and used during communication. The more we exercise our brains in ways such as learning new languages the more likely the chance our increased brain activity will provide healthy mental benefits through brain cell growth rather than succumbing to neuronal degeneration.
When learning the languages of nature we may gain similar health benefits, including additional important healing and total body health advantages. As with the study of foreign languages, learning nature's languages begins with listening. Intentful listening can take practice and time to master. Once we are successful at compartmentalizing away our daily distractions and we allow ourselves to focus on the sounds around us, we will then begin to recognize important sound patterns originating from Mother Nature.
As with any foreign speech we encounter in our day to day lives, nature's languages are always around us even when we don't consciously realize their presence. Importantly, until we learn to listen and recognize nature's sound patterns, natural dialects can remain an unlearned language to us, lost and seemingly useless chatter in everyday life background noise.
In addition to cognitive health, the adventure of learning nature's languages through deep listening practice can greatly improve the well-being of our heart, cardiovascular system and our body's organs. 'Ecotherapy', or spending significant amounts of time out in nature, has been shown through a number of scientific studies to improve not just our mental health but total body health too.
I've personally adopted the concept of nature therapy as my primary long term health management approach for years now and will go for a hike through the wilds whenever I get the chance. Spending time out in nature has had a positive impact on my health by reducing my blood pressure and stress to manageable levels. This can decrease risks of further aortic damage. Most of us really do understand and accept the premise the we benefit from time out in nature, but the reality is that though we may acknowledge nature based health benefits as important, few of us take the time required to go outdoors, hike, sit and hear.
I've found the concept of 'deep listening to the languages of nature' to be similar to what I've experienced once I learned how to use intenful visualization to recognize nature's infinite array of colors, textures, patterns and visual hues. Though I've always had a special affinity for art (right brained me) there have been times I may have looked at the forest as a swath of muddled green rather than an intricate collection of brush strokes, perspectives and countless subtle blends of blue, yellow and red hues.
A focused study of nature's visual arts has created so much good in my life. Inspiration for my artwork comes so much easier now and subject matter jumps out at me countless times when I am on just a short stroll through the woods. I see examples of nature's complimentary color use evident in an endless array of flowers, bark and leaves. Perspectives, textures, shadows and light lay out captivating possibilities before my eyes in the wilds along the path. Instead of muddled green around me I now live and exist in a dynamic, ever-changing exhibit of mind boggling nature art.
And as with nature's visual arts, so it can be too with nature's languages. Once we begin to focus on the sounds around us, nature's audio will tell illuminating stories full of all sorts of life information.
But to many, sounds come primarily from the television, car radio, digital audio players or the static in our head generated by our overly stressed brains. Most of the information our ears gather, other than from human speech and electronic audio is clumped into a group of audio what many think of as background noise. Unfortunately the healing languages of nature are often lost unnoticed in this ignored class of 'noise'.
And since most background noise is always there around us we ignore the complex sounds, filtering them into the trash file or if we can't quite filter out then suppressing their recognition. Unfortunately, when we filter out the sounds around us we not only lose the unwanted but we also miss out on healthy, beneficial audio of biological, ecological and geophysical systems too.
My personal journey into deep nature listening involved several meaningful milestones, beginning with my South Florida childhood where until my dad installed an air conditioner in the late 1960s, we slept with our windows open. Spending the weekend with my grandparents also afforded me different windows open nighttime sounds as one set of grandparents lived in an open, sandy grassland type ecosystem while the other lived under far reaching live oaks in a semi-tropical mesic hammock. Eyes wide open until the late hours I can remember lying there listening with awe to the mysterious sounds of frogs, migratory birds and wildlife as the Atlantic Ocean breezes rustled the live oak leaves.
Sometimes I'd sit under our backyard mahogany tree and listen as rain splashed against the leaves or watched the brilliant streaks of electricity light the darkened sky, creating black and white contrast art behind the old crooked live oak limbs. I came to wonder about and believe, even as a youth, all life, animals and plants could and do communicate. After all, was there that much difference between air rushing across human's and animal's vocal chords and the wind flowing through, rustling leaves of the ancient live oaks or strumming string like needles of the pines. They are all the languages of nature I would think, just different dialects but all with rich content.
As a teen my interests in natural sciences continued to broaden. I'd watch with amazement how during the yearly South Florida hurricane season, birds, insects and wildlife would disappear before an approaching storm would make landfall. Wherever they went they'd leave behind a deafening quiet, one that made me realize just how loud they must have been on a day to day basis when the sky was storm free. I'd just never really paid attention or practiced deep listening. I should have more often stopped and cleared my day dreaming mind and focused on the animal and plant sounds about me, a task so hard to do then but especially in today's world of digital audio and fast paced city noises.
And so for most of my entire adult life I've been drawn to the complexities of nature's art. And recognition of the intricate ways the universe stimulates my senses has bestowed upon me much happiness and a sense of secure well-being, for I know I don't live in a muddled up mess of colors and mumbled sounds. In fact, we live in the midst of infinite beautiful complexity. And if we chose to brush aside these complexities as background chatter or generic green then we are missing out on some of life's greatest adventures.
Today I carry small digital recorders most places Judy and I may go. One never knows when the bullfrogs may begin calling or the swallow tail kites sing. Storms, thunder and water's courses all speak as do creatures great and small. Plant leaves, limbs and needles rustle in the wind, each with their own unique vibrations so similar to our own vocalizations, all possessing a message. It's not so much how great the recorder is either, rather its about just having any recorder to prompt me to listen to those now recognized languages of nature.
Life is so full of amazing possibilities and opportunities to learn, grow, heal, enjoy and reflect. My path has led me through a period of focus on nature's colors, textures and hues. Yet I always knew though there was more to learn, so much more. Deep listening woke and turned me on to the enlightening dimensions of nature's languages. I know there are many other avenues to explore just ahead, such as scents, tastes, electromagnetic fields just to name a few. We exist in a dynamic universe.
For now I am glad I've begun to learn of deep listening. And the languages of nature are pure sublime.
You can hear some of my field recordings of the Languages of Florida Nature here.
Nuthatch life.
Audio link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApRh4urFlE0
The Nuthatch chicks are three weeks old now and about ready to fledge. Their vocalizations are much more adult-like now and their appetites are big! Listen in as their parents shuttle in bugs every minute or so into the nest, and as the parents arrive the chicks holler.
The baby birds are constantly moving around in their nest too! This audio makes me realize just how annoying sweet baby's screams can be lol. I'm sure that's why the parents prefer to spend time out foraging rather than listening to the incessant juvenile chatter.
Listen closely for the difference in the chick's racket and the adult's signaling calls.
This audio is an hour clip of the nighttime calls of many different species of frogs living in a shallow, freshwater coastal pond in Northern Florida.
Here is the link to the audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxGYzO7fmrU&t=1101s
I find these calls to be relaxing and calming, bringing back memories of my childhood when I'd spend the night with my grandparents in their Spanish style stucco house near the everglades in Miami.
With the large windows wide open, the nighttime calls and conversations of the many frogs living in the dense vegetation echoed into the bedroom.
Today listening to these frog calls I am transported back to a treasured period in my childhood, a period full of nature's healing.
A mermaid & thyme mandala. Soon to be NFT.
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| Nature Art, A Mermaid & Thyme Mandala by Kevin Songer |
