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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Soundscapes

The shifting soundtrack of the natural world tells a detailed story of nature’s health. This series examines how our ears tell the story of ecological decline and recovery

24 April 2024

  • Tony Juniper

    Birdsong once signalled the onset of spring on my street – but not this year

    Tony Juniper
    A dawn chorus of flutes, whistles and chirps once flowed through my Cambridge window, but there has been a shocking collapse in birdlife. What can be done?

22 April 2024

  • A wooden bench in the Sonian Forest in Belgium.

    ‘You can’t love something that isn’t there’: readers on how the sounds of nature have changed around them

    Swallows, cuckoos, curlews – so many species have dwindled or disappeared completely, and people are mourning their loss

19 April 2024

  • FEB 2024 - LONDON: Researchers are testing how to listen to the sounds soil makes. Listening out for like worms/ants. Pictured; Dr Carlos Abrahams listening to the soil. (Photography by Graeme Robertson / The Guardian )

    Crunching worms, squeaking voles, drumming ants: how scientists are learning to eavesdrop on the sounds of soil

    More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the in the earth below our feet, but only a fraction have been identified – so far

18 April 2024

  • A kākā at Zealandia ecosanctuary, Wellington, New Zealand.

    Penguins in the pond, kiwi in the back yard: how a city brought back its birds

    As nature falls silent in most cities around the world, New Zealand’s capital has been transformed by the sound of native birds returning to the dawn chorus

17 April 2024

  • Richard Broughton has been monitoring and recording marsh tits in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire, for 22 years.

    ‘These birds are telling us something serious is happening’: the songbirds disappearing from Britain’s woods

    The dramatic decline of marsh tits in an ancient Cambridgeshire woodland is a story repeated across the UK as human activity drives species towards extinction

16 April 2024

  • Image of green hills and trees overlaid with sound bars

    No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent

    As the soundscape of the natural world began to disappear over 30 years, one man was listening and recording it all
  • Two men stand with sound booms in a state park in California

    World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

    Loss of intensity and diversity of noises in ecosystems reflects an alarming decline in healthy biodiversity, say sound ecologists
  • A marsh tit perched on a rock (Photgraph: Lisa Geoghegan/Alamy Stock Photo)

    Soundscape ecology: a window into a disappearing world – podcast

    Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Madeleine Finlay about her visit to Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, where ecologist Richard Broughton has witnessed the decline of the marsh tit population over 22 years, and has heard the impact on the wood’s soundscape

2 April 2024

  • A chaffinch in the sunlight.

    Tell us how the sound of nature is changing in your local area

    We would like to hear about the natural sounds you’ve noticed disappearing from your local neighbourhood
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