[HN Gopher] Map of forest sounds from around the world
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       Map of forest sounds from around the world
        
       Author : henry_pulver
       Score  : 151 points
       Date   : 2024-06-14 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (timberfestival.org.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (timberfestival.org.uk)
        
       | marttt wrote:
       | A similar project is radio aporee, a huge corpus of field
       | recordings from all over the world (see the "maps" section for
       | searching etc): https://aporee.org/
        
         | henry_pulver wrote:
         | Wow, this has many more recordings & a larger variety! Thanks
         | for sharing
        
       | Amorymeltzer wrote:
       | Something I've thought about recently is how _loud_ forests
       | should be. Daniel Mason names this loss explicitly in the
       | wonderful _North Woods_ , namely that "[b]etween 1970 and 2019
       | alone, nearly a third of all birds had disappeared from North
       | America. Once, the forest would have been deafening." Likewise,
       | Cat Bohannon's stellar _Eve_ notes that  "[w]hen you first visit
       | a tropical rain forest, the dominant emotion is usually surprise
       | --not over the beauty of the place, nor over how hot it is. The
       | biggest shock is that it's bloody _loud_. "
        
         | imhoguy wrote:
         | Reminds me midsummer pine forests in south Italy. Swarms of
         | cicadas are damn loud.
        
         | dmbche wrote:
         | Have a look at "Burden of dreams", a doc about Werner Herzog
         | moving a boat over a mountain (with a team, to film
         | "Fitzcaraldo") in the amazon. "The birds don't sing, they
         | screech in pain"
         | 
         | Good movie!
        
       | antwerp1 wrote:
       | I spent one evening laying on the Yosemite valley floor, from
       | dusk until well past the moon and stars had made their
       | appearances. The entire time I was there, frogs were holding a
       | concert. And sound echoes between the rocks.
       | 
       | I think timing might be an interesting factor to introduce, e.g.
       | all forests at sunset.
        
         | magneticnorth wrote:
         | I clicked around in the southern appalachians on this map, and
         | there are a few nighttime recordings from there. The night ones
         | are very loud with frogs and insects, in contrast with the
         | daytime ones that are mostly birds.
         | 
         | Maybe as they get more data that'll be something you can filter
         | on.
        
       | throwup238 wrote:
       | There's also a radio interface that uses this data:
       | https://www.tree.fm/
        
       | easyKL wrote:
       | There are also the field recordings (mostly urban) from Tsonami
       | https://www.audiomapa.org/
       | 
       | Worth mentioning the huge database of Freesound
       | https://freesound.org/browse/geotags/
        
       | dukeofdoom wrote:
       | Something I realized hiking the stairway to heaven is how much
       | road traffic in a valley can be amplified by surrounding
       | mountains. Can't be good for nature.
        
       | leidenfrost wrote:
       | Fun fact, when I went to a trip through Europe (I'm from Buenos
       | Aires) I arrived at 6AM on a sunday. And the first thing I
       | noticed is how different the bird sounds are.
        
       | lucb1e wrote:
       | No recordings yet in my area, was looking how to contribute:
       | audio seems licensed under creative commons so it's not locked in
       | (nice), submission process sounds straightforward (nice),
       | checking out the submission flow: that requires signing in with a
       | google account... but there is also an email address mentioned,
       | perhaps that's an alternative path. Bit sad that the default flow
       | just assumes you're happy with one of the biggest ad tech
       | companies' privacy policy, especially when this project seems to
       | have taken the effort to make a clear and succinct privacy policy
       | of their own.
        
       | vinc wrote:
       | I'm from Western Europe but I lived a year and a half in New
       | Zealand almost a decade ago, I miss the wilderness and the sound
       | of the birds from this area of the world. This project is neat!
        
         | sivers wrote:
         | (hi Vincent.) I've lived in New Zealand for the last 12 years,
         | and still also appreciate the the sounds of the birds every
         | day. It never gets old, for me. The tui birds, bellbirds,
         | saddlebacks, and grey warblers in particular.
         | 
         | When I lived in England for a year, I'd play recordings of New
         | Zealand forests in the background because I was so homesick for
         | these bird sounds.
        
           | vinc wrote:
           | The blackbirds and the tawny owls that live around my house
           | remind me bit of the tui and the ruru sometime. But the tui
           | birds are really unique and amazing! It's almost magical :) I
           | remember listening to them one last time before hoping into
           | the bus to the airport because I knew I would miss them a
           | lot.
           | 
           | I also spent half a year on Steward Island during my first
           | winter where there's a lot of kiwi birds and I still catch
           | myself waiting for their calls in the forest next to my home
           | in Europe at night haha!
        
       | wingworks wrote:
       | It's a shame most (all?) the sound recordings are so short. ~1min
       | I would love to have like 30m or longer ones.
        
       | perdomon wrote:
       | I make ambient music, and stuff like this is so nice to put in
       | the background. Love that someone decided to collect and organize
       | these.
        
       | aplkorex wrote:
       | I love this. Sometimes we humans are so batshit crazy trying to
       | build that next-big-mega-thing... and here we have an easy-to-use
       | map of forest sounds, and it just works. Kudos!
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-14 23:00 UTC)