Ambient Colorado

An interview with Jacob Job featuring more grasslands of Colorado.

Episode photograph: Windmill with a pump and cattle water tank overlooking the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area near Ft. Collins in northern Colorado (Marek Uliasz/Alamy)

Transcript

ANN MARIE AWAD: Welcome to this special bonus episode of Ambient Colorado. My name is Ann Marie Awad and I’m part of the team behind this show and I’d like to introduce you to another member of that team, Jacob Job. The man behind the stunning sounds that you hear in every episode.

AMA: Hello, Jacob!

JACOB JOB: Hi Ann Marie, how are you?

AMA: Good. How are you doing?

JJ: I’m doing quite well.

AMA: Jacob, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and the work you do as a sound recordist?

JJ: Yeah, I’m a scientist who decided I didn’t want to do science anymore. And so I took my knowledge of the outdoors, ecology and I turned it into ... or I channeled it into audio recording, where I mixed cool recordings of pretty places around the country to use in communication pieces like Ambient Colorado and other podcasts.

AMA: And is there, like, a favorite outdoor place you’ve ever recorded?

JJ: Oh, man. So many different places. I would say my favorite has to be the North Woods of Minnesota, up in the Boundary Waters with, like, the Common Loons, and the thunderstorms. And all the songbirds.

AMA: Oh yeah, it sounds amazing. Well, so we just came out of an episode of beautiful prairie sounds and we’re going to enjoy some more. But before we move on to some new prairie sounds, I wonder if you have some favorites from the last episode.

JJ: Yeah, well, the prairie is interesting. It’s a real challenge to record, just because it’s wide open, there’s wind all the time, which is as you probably are aware, really tough on microphones and really tough recording environment, but on this particular morning I was out recording and I found this, like, dip in the prairie where there was this wetland, and so it kinda shielded me from the wind but it also gave me an opportunity to, like, explore all this life around this wetland, these songbirds, and swallows, and insects. It was just a really acoustically rich environment. I think actually the water from that wetland made the acoustics. sound even better than it would have otherwise so it was just a really neat find out there in the middle of the prairie.

AMA: Yeah, yeah. And that was, can you tell us, where?

JJ: That was out in the Pawnee National Grasslands, up in northeast Colorado.

AMA: And so the reason that we had decided to do a bonus episode today was you have lots of other recordings from some other beautiful prairie locations in the state. I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about the places we’re going to hear from today.

JJ: Absolutely. I think we have three different locations in the bonus episode. One of them takes place in Fort Collins Colorado actually just outside the city limits at a place called Reservoir Ridge Natural Area. Just a small, maybe hundred, two hundred acre prairie-type setting with wetland right in the middle of it, and surrounded by houses, surrounded by busy roads, and you get these really, really neat prairie birds that you otherwise wouldn’t get, had that place not been preserved. So I think that’s a really special spot because it’s so close to people.

JJ: Another one of the locations, a little bit farther up in Northern Colorado, Wellington State Game Area. Sort of a transition from between prairie habitats and farmland, sort of these working lands. And I found this large pond out there surrounded by cattails, and I discovered this breeding population of marsh wrens and yellow-headed blackbirds, just this really beautiful sound of birds around this place. And so I crawled in knee deep into the pond and attached my microphones to the cattails and I left. I just left that recording going overnight and I really got an inside peek into the lives of these birds around that prairie pothole, so to speak.

JJ: And then the last recording took place at Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, again, north of Fort Collins in Northern Colorado, wide open very short grass prairie, very hot. A dawn-ish type of recording, so early in the morning I went out there with all of my recording gear and just hit record and really was interested in understanding what were the natural sounds out in this prairie, but also because so many of our prairie lands are also working lands what are the anthropogenic noises out there like cows mooing and you can hear oil and gas development and distant trains going by and so sort of this sharing of the land with wildlife and people.

AMA: Yeah, that’s very cool. I wonder if you have favorite sounds from this episode we’re about to hear.

JJ: I mean, I really do think the prairie puddle, where we’ve got these marsh wrens and yellow-...

An early May visit to Pawnee National Grasslands, featuring Colorado's official state bird (the lark bunting), prairie dogs, red-winged blackbirds, and more.

Field recordings by Jacob Job. Hear more from Jacob Job at https://www.jacobrjob.com/

Sound design by Patrick McnameeKing. Hear more from Patrick McNameeKing on his podcast, Empty Clouds (Spotify, Apple, Google)

Music by R. J. Fechter. Hear more from R. J. Fechter on https://rjfechter.bandcamp.com and https://www.twitch.tv/rjandj

Series producer: Martin Burch

Series adviser: Ann Marie Awad

Narrator: Sarah Vitak

Series illustration: Charlie Dillon

Episode photographs, clockwise from top left:

Grassland sign, Pawnee National Grassland, Pawnee Pioneer Trails Scenic and Historic Byway, Colorado (George Ostertag/Alamy)

Lark Bunting (Calamospiza melanocorys) Pawnee National Grasslands, Colorado, United States. 6 July 2017. Adult Male doing display flight. Passerellidae (Rick & Nora Bowers/Alamy)

Black tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, United States. 6 July 2017. Adult Sciuridae (Rick & Nora Bowers/Alamy)

Male red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) displaying, Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, United States of America (James Hager/Alamy)

Transcript

Welcome to Ambient Colorado. I’m Sarah Vitak.

We’re visiting the Pawnee National Grassland in Northeastern Colorado today.

It’s a cold and windy May morning on the prairie.

This is the place to hear the official state bird, the lark bunting. And that’s not all.

Nearby, red-wing blackbirds are kicking up a fuss, in a small round marshland known as a prairie pothole. And there’s the unmistakable coo of the mourning dove.

Later, we hear chirps from an iconic grassland native, but this one is a rodent, not a bird.

Prairie dogs, a type of ground squirrel, stand upright like fluffy meerkats to watch over their underground tunnels.

We end our tour of Colorado’s prairies with birds at Reservoir Ridge ... near the city of Fort Collins. Bobolinks fly all the way from South America each year to find a mate here.

Want to hear more from the state’s grasslands ... and find out how Jacob captured these scenes?

Be sure to subscribe for a bonus episode with a behind-the-scenes peek at how we make this podcast.

Appreciate the natural sounds of a Colorado backyard.

Hear more from Jacob Job at https://www.jacobrjob.com/

Series illustration: Charlie Dillon

Episode photograph: Marek Uliasz / Alamy (Storm cloud over Fort Collins, Colorado)

Hear more from R. J. Fechter on https://rjfechter.bandcamp.com and https://www.twitch.tv/rjandj

Hear more from Patrick McNameeKing on his podcast, Empty Clouds (Spotify, Apple, Google)

Transcript

Welcome to Ambient Colorado. I’m Martin Burch.

Today ... a new perspective on a familiar, domestic landscape ... as we listen very closely to a northern Colorado backyard.

Our recording equipment makes it easier to be a patient, quiet listener ... revealing ever-present details which can be easily missed.

When most people are still asleep ... a whole bush full of House Sparrows are waking up and chatting away in the pre-dawn light ... as sprinklers water the garden.

Later ... we get close enough to touch the black-capped chickadees eating from a bird feeder and bathing in a small fountain.

Big sounds deserve a closer listen, too. Crickets chirp as a train passes through. A thunderstorm rolls in. And birds sing as the recycling is collected.

Nature is all around us ... if you listen closely.

Close

Sounds of Loveland [love-lund], Colorado ... recorded by Jacob Job.

Series Producer ... Martin Burch.

Series Adviser ... Ann Marie Awad.

Sound Design by Patrick McnameeKing.

Music by R. J. Fechter.

I’m Sarah Vitak in Denver, Colorado.

Tour the rivers and creeks of north-central Colorado.

Field recordings by Jacob Job. Hear more from Jacob Job at https://www.jacobrjob.com/

Sound design by Patrick McnameeKing.

Music by R. J. Fechter. Hear more from R. J. Fechter on https://rjfechter.bandcamp.com and https://www.twitch.tv/rjandj

Series producer: Martin Burch

Series adviser: Ann Marie Awad

Narrator: Sarah Vitak

Series illustration: Charlie Dillon

Episode photograph: Larry Lamsa (American Dipper, Gunnison County) CC-BY 2.0

Transcript

Welcome to the Ambient Colorado podcast. I’m Sarah Vitak.

A gentle thundershower, near Black Canyon Creek in eastern Rocky Mountain National Park, begins our journey along Colorado’s waterways.

Melting snow, and spring rain, swell Colorado’s creeks and feed the state’s iconic rivers.

Along the North Fork of the Cache la Poudre River, little gray birds, called American Dippers, sing as they dip their fluffy round heads under the water, looking for something to eat.

Later, sparrows sing ​​along North Saint Vrain Creek, which feeds into the South Platte River.

We end on a June morning with the roar of Tonahutu Creek overflowing its banks as it fills Grand Lake downstream.

Spring comes to the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The recordings in this episode were made in the spring and summer of 2021 to study the effects of the East Troublesome Fire, a wildfire which burned the previous autumn.

Field recordings by Jacob Job. Hear more from Jacob Job at https://www.jacobrjob.com/

Sound design by Patrick McnameeKing.

Music by R. J. Fechter. Hear more from R. J. Fechter on https://rjfechter.bandcamp.com and https://www.twitch.tv/rjandj

Series producer: Martin Burch

Series illustration: Charlie Dillon

Episode photograph: Brian Wolski / Alamy (Kawuneeche Valley)

Special thanks to Ann Marie Awad.

Transcript

Welcome to the Ambient Colorado podcast. I’m Sarah Vitak.

Today, spring comes to the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. We’re high up, in the mountain meadows and evergreen forests, near the headwaters of the Colorado river.

First, you’ll hear a dawn chorus of birds: robin, snipe, sparrow ... in full song at 6:30 in the morning.

The birds continue to sing, even as snow begins to fall. Clumps of heavy, fresh snow slide off the pine trees and land with gentle thumps.

When the sun comes out, and the weather warms, the snow melts and flows into the creeks and lakes here.

Finally, as the sun sets, the chorus frogs sing, joined by an owl and small water birds.