289 Dawn birds of rural Shropshire

Welcome back to Radio Lento and a new year of captured quiet from natural places. It's so good you are here. To open 2026 we're heading back to rural Shropshire which we visited last year thanks to a listener recommendation. We found so many perfect places on this trip in May. Remember almost every Lento soundscape is made when there's nobody about, not even us. What you hear is a fully authentic passage of time recorded in high definition spatial sound, ideal for headphone or Airpod listening. Each recording is captured using a one-shot true-timeline method and through the same device, the Lento box, which we also call our sound camera. Our aim is to capture long-form sound images that let you engage as directly as possible with the landscape, so it speaks for itself, without us or anybody else to get in the way. And wildlife does sound better when there are no people about. The exact location of the Lento box on this recording is Poles Coppice, a nature reserve surrounded by farmland and grassy moors. We gave it #LentoApproved status. It's spring. Weather conditions are fair. Wind very light, just 2 to 3 knots, with occasional gusts of 10 to 15 knots. Wind gusts can often be heard sweeping through the oak trees, from left to right of scene. When this happens you really get a sense of the physical space around you (especially if you are listening on headphones or Airpods). * This passage of time begins with the last few fragile moments of night quiet. Then the very first bird of the new day begins to sing. Gradually, as time passes and the sky grows in luminosity, more birds start to sing. After about 15 minutes the dawn chorus is underway. It continues over the full 75 minutes of this episode segment, shifting and changing in pace and intensity. It's subtle and interesting how the changes blend into one another, and happen almost like movements of a symphony, though we aren't that keen on imposing human ideas onto the patterns of nature. We can't talk to birds and ask them what they are singing and why, but we can apply our human ability to bear witness to this amazing phenomenon without interfering or disturbing it.

Tied to a railing, the Lento box records alone. It's about two in the morning along the river bank east of Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. Wind is blowing inland from the east, light, gusting to moderate. Sky dark, and heavy with cloud. Huge rainclouds are approaching, currently located out over the North Sea. When they arrive this whole area will be subjected to long periods of persistent, often squally rain, lasting well into the next day. For now though the Lento box is dry. Its microphones capturing just the sound of the incoming tide as it steadily advances up the seawall. Angled directly towards Wallasea Island, the expanse of estuary water between the seawall and the opposite bank of the River Crouch can be heard as a wide and spatial backdrop. Throughout this 30 minute passage of nocturnal time, the way the water plays along the seawall constantly develops and evolves. Sometimes individual waves form into resonant airpockets, producing fleetingly melodic notes. Wave energies surge and dissipate, surge and dissipate, edging closer and closer to the microphones on the rising tide. What's consistent is the timbre of the water as it washes over the rippled ridges of the seawall. To us silvery. Each individual wave captured in sharp spatial detail that you can experience in full using headphones or AirPods. At twenty three minutes an aircraft approaches from the east and passes over Wallasea Island. From left to right of scene. Reveals across the empty void of the sky how human activity can still be heard over this otherwise wild and empty landscape. * This sound photograph of the tidal River Crouch comes from a twelve hour non-stop overnight recording we made back in August 2021. For more sections of time from this same location please browse the Lento archive.

The still luminous sky above the sheer rock cliffs was turning an even deeper shade of blue, as we stepped down onto the wet sand of the beach at Boggle Hole. For a moment we just had to stand. Take it all in. Wide stretches of undulating sand. Half submerged boulders like sleeping elephants. Towering rock faces so vertical and so angled that they catch and reflect every breaking wave, every calling bird, every clack of a dislodged stone, back into your ears, so you hear them for a second time. The tide's been receding for several hours. We turn right, and walk to find a good spot to record. We follow the band of newly exposed sand along the tidal zone, dodging pools of stranded water. See sea birds swooping, then landing, momentarily. Snatch up a morsel. Then they're up and flying again. Herring gulls circle high overhead. Black headed gulls pass like projectiles, screeching for the empty air in front of them to get out of the way. Their bold cries caught, and reflected, by the plummeting cliffs of sheer vertical rock. This we know, we hear, we see, we feel, is a rarified place. A landscape of exceptional quality. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of miles we have to go to find places like this, it's always worth it. Environments where extreme quiet and extreme spatialness coexist, together, for hours. Undisturbed. Uninterrupted. Unspoiled. We found a spot, then left the Lento box on a tripod to record the scene alone, in the gathering dark. * We made this recording, or more accurately we took this sound photograph of Boggle Hole beach one evening last August whilst staying at the Youth Hostel. It's one of the most spatial sound captures we've made this year. Listen with headphones in a quiet place, and let yourself settle into the passage of time, to let your ears adjust and get the full spatial effect.

Capturing the sound-feel of real night quiet is special. It requires a lot of time and a location where quiet naturally occurs in more than just a fleeting way. Quiet is not silence. Silence is the absence of sound, whereas quiet happens when everything in the landscape is still audible. Just softer, and slower. Night brings quiet to natural and edgeland places. It enables us to better hear an environment's true spatialness and blend of sound signatures. By tying the Lento box to a tree looking down over the Warren on the Kent coast and exposing the microphones for over 50 hours non-stop, long periods of naturally occurring quiet were captured that serve as a true impression of this place. In this 90-minute passage of time taken from the dead of night on the second day of the recording, the sea can be heard distantly crashing onto the beach at the foot of the Warren. It surges and retreats, in slow unfurling rhythms. Close to the microphones, in the leaf litter around the tree, crickets call to each other in regular patterns, like naturally occurring clocks. Banks of wind blow in from time to time, gently ruffling leaves from left to right of scene. Sounds of indistinct origin sometimes echo across the valley, revealing the true width and depth of the space and far cries of seagulls, high flying in the vastness of the night sky.   Of course this is England, and only a short distance from France. The headlights of French cars are sometimes visible from this very point. The Strait of Dover is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and a flight path runs directly over this area. Despite these mechanisms of human life, the planes that do overfly during this passage of time are quite gentle in the way they traverse the sky. It is the night quiet, and the sea, and the crickets that speak for themselves, and mean we just have to share this recording so everyone can be a sound-witness to the quiet of this place. * We made this recording back in August 2024. We didn't actually intend to leave the Lento box out recording for so long (into a third day) but we're glad we did.

The making of this high-definition sound photograph of Chesil Beach began thanks to the number 1 bus from Weymouth to Portland. As we stepped aboard, the sky felt low. Folded and layered with grey October cloud. Rain was in the forecast so we'd taken raincoats.  After twenty minutes and the final stretch across the exposed coastal road, the bus pulled into our stop. On the way the views of Portland had struck an impressive sight, pointed bravely out to sea. It felt blowy off the bus as it always does here, but no rain, yet. We crossed the road, then up and over the largest shingle berm of any coastal area we know. Dropping down more berms, scrunching over more acres of perfectly rounded pebbles, we and the Lento box finally arrived at the shoreline. Here is a soundscape that's beyond description. It takes a few minutes to acclimatise. Aural textures and flows wash around and through us, folding and layering like the clouds above. We'd forgotten how everything about this place engages the senses. Redefines what's normal. Resizes us into what we are. Tiny individuals, standing upon billions of even tinier stones. The rain never came. Instead windows of blue opened and closed between the folds above. As the mics captured the scene The onshore breeze remained steady, letting the Lento box record every spatial and textural detail of the Chesil waves, only light winds buffeting. The sea glowed turquois blue against the ruffled grey sky. Each rolling wave then turned pure white, as it broke over the beach of rich brown pebbles. The shore here stretches as far as the eye can see. To left of scene. To right of scene. Turquois. White. Brown. A unique place, with a unique soundscape, crystal clear, free of interfering noise thanks to the giant shingle berm. * We made this on-location recording on Chesil Beach in Dorset just after 1pm on Wednesday this week. Special thanks to our friends and Lento supporters who live in Weymouth. They gave us a lovely welcome and a warm tea stop on our travels to make this recording. We feel it's one of the best sound captures we've made so far of Chesil Beach. further segments to follow in future episodes from this same location.

Reaching the top of Long Mynd in rural Shropshire requires a good steady climb. The rocky footpath winds up and up, and so must you, if you want to get to the top. Most people do, as much for that sense of physical achievement gained over an hour or two, as the views. 360 degree panoramic views of all that makes this whole area so special. But before you get to those views, there are many other fascinating sights to be had on the way up. And not only for the eyes.  Long Mynd is both a wild place and an area only lightly impacted by overflights. Once you are within the dramatic contours of this ancient landscape it is likely you'll encounter periods of near pristine quiet. Pristine quiet activates something fascinating in us, something we normally can't engage. Heightened aural awareness. Heightened aural awareness lets us fully connect with the landscape via our sense of hearing.  Hearing is a kind of touch sense. While we can feel the wind as it buffits against our faces and bodies, we are thanks to the wind, able to perceive trees and grasses even though they may be a hundred yards away. Wind presses through their physical shapes and structures producing sound vibrations that then physically land on our eardrums. It's like we are touching them, even though they are beyond the reach of our hands.  The higher you go up Long Mynd, the more you and the landscape are exposed to the elements. The wind surges stronger and stronger. Where the narrow and very steep footpath threads along the edge of rocks and a plummeting drop, the wind cannot be ignored. It is physical, and it is enlivening. It enlivens us, and it enlivens the trees and grasses. the birds. The hardy sheep as they graze the upland pasture. The tiny grasshoppers and crickets, only heard when the wind drops.   * We made this recording up on Long Mynd back in August. It's perhaps our most precipitous recording location so far! We carefully attached the box to a dramatic hawthorn tree overhanging one of the many sheer drops, just off the footpath. Hikers can be heard passing up and down the stony path. Right of scene the wild landscape slopes steeply up. Left of scene slopes steeply down into the valley below. Centre scene are trees on the opposite side of the cleft. Sheep graze on steep ground below the tree for a while, and a raven or large crow briefly passes. We think there's a stonechat there too. It's very difficult to capture sound landscapes in the face of such powerful wind gusts, but the wind really is the very essence of this wild place, and so we've made an extra effort to sonically balance the hugely varying loudness levels in this recording and share what we hope is a listenable sound view of Long Mynd in beautiful Shropshire.

Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast feels remote for England. It lies at the bottom of a very steep road that descends down from the road between Whitby and Scarborough. The sign at the top of the village warns sightseers interested in a look not even to try driving down. With virtually no traffic noise and the whole area under a quiet sky, we knew this was a good place for the Lento microphones. The lane (we walked, obviously) winds very steeply down, passes a few little shops, a pub, a grocery shop with a jar part filled with fizzy drink to catch the wasps, and ends in a ramp onto the beach. Perfect waves break. Perfect because every detail can be heard cleanly, and precisely. No road or plane noise to get in the way.  Robin Hood's Bay was not actually our final resting point. For this we needed to walk about a quarter of a mile over the sand to the Youth Hostel at Boggle Hole. Delightfully named. Perfectly located.  Access across the beach is only possible when the tide is out. You know you're close when you reach a rocky stream that flows down from the cliffs. The last stretch, harder work. The stream is not walking boots friendly, uneven stepping stones look fun but need a confidence to use.  The Youth Hostel is tranquil. It really has the most peaceful surroundings of anywhere we've ever stayed. Above the hostel is a wooded area rich with rustling trees. As night approached we followed a tiny footpath up in between the trees. They swayed and hushed in the onshore breeze flowing up from the beach. We found a tree with a good trunk and tied the Lento box on to capture the sound of the night. * This section of time is captured in the woods above the Youth Hostel. It's from 3am, early August. Weather conditions are warm and dry, with moderate winds gusting to strong. Dark bush crickets live amongst the trees. They can be heard all through the night. They can, if you feel like it, provide something nice to count, like sheep, to help you get to sleep.

The environment within the cabin of a sleeper train is, well, unusual. Quite contradictory. It feels empty when you first step in, but full seconds later. It has a dead quiet feel, whilst also being noisy. It affords little physical space to move about in, yet anything you accidentally drop ends up out of reach. It would feel claustrophobic too if it weren't also strangely spatial when the lights are out. It has bareness and simplicity that somehow affords comfort. And the cabin often rocks about, as do you. The sound-feel within the cabin is unusual too. To start with there's rumble. Rumblings that roll constantly while the train is in motion. Sudden low frequency thuds and judders, as the carriages roll over joints and points in the track. There are regular pressure bumps in the internal air caused by trains passing close by in the opposite direction, and multiple strong humming sounds from the air conditioning and electric motors operating the train. Delicate sounds too. Tiny creaks and subtle shiftings in the fabrics and panelling that line the cabin, especially the ceiling which is made of flexible sound-absorbing slats.  To be conducive to sleep you'd have thought the cabin ideally needs none of this. Yet there is  an intense stillness. And during your considerable time in the cabin, twelve hours and more, these aural qualities interact, and form into their own rhythms. The mental chemistry of it all reacts to produce soporific calm. Set against my knees (as I slept) and the side wall of the cabin, with no inches to spare and bed clothes pushed up all around which would normally scupper any spatial recording, the Lento box recorded as the "night" began. Sleeping on a sleeper train is not like any normal night of course. The whole world around you is moving, rocking, as is everything in the soundscape. And yet you get your head into the comfortable hinged pillow (the back half goes up forming a bump protector) and you enter into a long aurally enhanced doze, that may, if you are lucky, become proper sleep.  Listening back the Lento box captured a true impression of being in a sleeper train cabin. Including occasional bed covers shifting and one of us popping out of the cabin briefly which is all part and parcel of the sound experience. This passage of time is somewhere between 3am and 4am. The train is speeding steadily across France, passing through lamplit towns and cities as it rolls on through the night. (It's hard to resist sleeping with the window blind part rolled up so you can witness these truly marvellous scenes.) The journey on this SNCF service is over 850km, departing Cerbere station on the extreme southern coast of France at 1850hrs, arriving Paris Gare d'Austerlitz at breakfast time the next morning. >> We've just shared three minutes of video of the train gliding through the night. Watch on our YouTube. 

Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn't have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that'd all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening so powerful, so bright, they'd temporarily frozen us to the spot. We shone our torch from tree to tree, searching for a suitable trunk that might provide some shelter for the Lento box. The road was deserted. Traffic was not an issue. Only one more village lay beyond, where the road literally ended.      A patch of bare trunk came into view between rain soaked leaves. Around us every thing glistened. And dripped. Every shrub. Every branch. Every leaf.  To the eyes and to the ears it was a rich sparkling sensory experience, that seemed interchangeable. Reaching through we tied the Lento box onto the trunk, angled it onto the wide landscape scene, and left it to record alone through the night.  This segment of time was captured from just before 3am to just after 4am. Heavy rain falls and the sky periodically grumbles with thunder, but eventually it eases off. To the right of scene one and sometimes more tiny beeps can be heard from time to time. We aren't sure what creatures make these delicately fleeting sounds. Frogs perhaps, lizards, or insects? The sounds are both soft and yet very distinguishable in the soundscape, and comforting for some curious reason. The medieval clock on the church of Sant Llorenc strikes the quarters and the hours through the night. Ancient bells seem even more enchanting when heard in the dead of night, and through crystal clear rain.

Our friends told us that in Sant Llorenc the weather changes towards the end of August. Endless days of thick summer heat gives way to something altogether more dramatic. Ominous black clouds the size of cities. Rain drops like translucent grapes. Fork lightening like you see at the cinema. Thunder, that carves open the sky, like unimaginably huge boulders crashing downwards from the high mountain peaks.  We followed the river Muga out of Sant Llorenc, into the valley beyond. Our aim was to reach a reservoir which we thought may be a good place to leave the Lento box to make an overnight recording. Eventually, along rough tracks surrounded by dense trees and noisy cicadas, we reached the water. Our way however was blocked. Two white horses.  Impressive creatures. Standing astride the track. They had their backs towards us. We stopped, and watched, and kept our distance. Despite facing the other way the horses knew we were there. In low voices we shared ideas on what to do, whilst continuing to watch. Both stood firm. They were expressing only the smallest of movements through their tails.  Some time passed. It felt like they were communicating something to us. But what? The valley with all its assorted cicadas seemed, somehow, to have fallen silent. We decided not to try to pass them. Something perhaps in the way they moved their tails said turn back. So we turned back. Returning along the track we entered an area of the valley where the shallow river sounded unusually sonorous. The way the water tumbled over the rocks. the depth, and the particular arrangement of the trees. Just off the track a tree looked down into the gorge, so we tied the lento box to it. It was the perfect place for it to record. Perhaps, if we could have read the tails of the horses, this was what they were trying to say. Record back where you've come. Where it's sheltered. And where the river wrills. There's a storm. Coming.