Nature Healing; Immersed With Frog & Wading Bird Night Calls, 4 hours

 Doing field-recording & nature audio immersion has helped me manage and heal both my aortic dissection symptoms and my kidney cancer.  Not only do I find immense pleasure in hiking far into the wilderness to place the recorders in isolated habitat, but processing the audio and then listening to the languages of nature makes me feel like I am cloaked with a snug, weighted blanket woven by Gaia.

I really enjoy this one audio clip and think you would enjoy listening to it also.

Four hours of mid-May post-sunset amphibian calls across the wide, tidally influenced West Goose Creek marsh in the Wakulla District of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The audio begins around 7pm EST and continues to 11 pm EST during a light drizzly rain. Recorded frogs include pig frogs (Rana grylio), leopard frogs (Lithobates sphenocephalus), green tree frogs (Hyla cinerea) and others. Herons and other wading birds can be heard in the background occasionally and the periodic aircraft engine noise passing overhead. The wide open marsh is covered with black needlerush (Juncus spp.) and crimson marsh mallow (Hibiscus coccineus). Our Sony D10 recorders equipped with Clippy stereo microphones protected with windbubbles and dry bags were placed about 2 meters above the saturated ground secured in evergreen branches of wax myrtle shrubs (Morella cerifera).

Drizzly Marsh Night, 4 hours Nature Audio

Bioacoustics, Steady Rain in Slash Pine Flatwoods (Pinus elliottii)

Here is another nature audio recording, this time of a steady but gentle rain in the open slash pine, Pinus elliottii, flatwoods.  

I've found there are a lot of differences in the way raindrops sound depending upon the types of leaf litter the raindrops strike.  For example, the soft sounds of rain falling upon pine needles is in contrast to the sharper striking of raindrops on dried Southern Magnolia leaves, Magnolia grandiflora.

The sounds of a morning rain on slash pine needles relaxes my body and 'washes' away any stress I may be carrying.  As a boy growing up in South Florida I used to climb the small treehouse platform in our backyard oak tree and sit in the rain.  There is just something soothing in those raindrops.

Another interesting tidbit I am learning as I experience nature sounds in addition to those colors and textures and scents I usually notice is that there are two types of 'foreign' noises I can hear regardless of how far out into the swamp or forest I am; the low frequency hum of far off automobile engines (airplanes too) carrying across the tree tops and also the noisy clicking of my mechanical aortic heart valve (no escaping that one).  

Enjoy the hour long rain event across soft beds of slash pine needles!  Sony PCM recorder in dry bag with a set of omni stereo lav mics wrapped in windbubbles. P.S. I am sold on the protective qualities of good lav mic covers such as the windbubbles.  To date my mics have stayed relatively dry with no rain damage even in prolonged rain events as long as they are covered with a good type of windbubbles.  To dry the windbubbles out after a spell in the storm I lay them on a folded up paper towel on my desk.  The paper wicks away the water and overnight they are dry and ready to go.  This too is a good way to discern the quality of your windbubbles for a good pair will not stain the paper towel with color dye.

Enjoy the sounds of rain in the Flatwoods!