Kalahari Sunrise

11/17/21 • 25 min

In this week’s episode of Sound Escapes, experience dawn in the Kalahari Desert as the sun rises over the sandy savannah of southern Africa. It’s nearly level at this part of the Kalahari Desert. The trees are widely spaced. There’s almost no available water. You cannot see very far — the heat itself ripples the horizon. "It's a place that's hard for me to imagine any animal being at home," says Gordon Hempton. "But of course they certainly sound like they are."

ID the birds in this episode: Kalahari Sunrise Bird List

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Support for Sound Escapes comes from Jim and Birte Falconer of Seattle.

BirdNote Presents: Sound Escapes is produced by Mark Bramhill and John Kessler. Ashley Ahearn is our editor. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Sound Escapes illustration by Jia-yi Liu

ID the birds in this episode: Kalahari Sunrise Bird List

Connect with BirdNote on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Sign up to receive BirdNote's weekly newsletter

Support for Sound Escapes comes from Jim and Birte Falconer of Seattle.

BirdNote Presents: Sound Escapes is produced by Mark Bramhill and John Kessler. Ashley Ahearn is our editor. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Sound Escapes illustration by Jia-yi Liu

Previous Episode

John Muir's Yosemite

“Water makes every sound imaginable and occupies every frequency audible to the human ear and certainly spans the dynamic range from the faintest sound to near distortion,” says Gordon Hempton, the Sound Tracker.

The writings of John Muir can guide our ears, as we listen to the water music: “The deep bass tones of the fall, the clashing ringing spray an infinite variety of small, low tones of the current gliding past the side of the Boulder Island and glinting against a thousand smaller stones down the Ferny channel.”

In this episode of Sound Escapes, walk in Muir’s footsteps as you follow the sounds of the Merced River in Yosemite National Park.

ID the birds in this episode: John Muir's Yosemite Bird List

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Support for Sound Escapes comes from Jim and Birte Falconer of Seattle.

BirdNote Presents: Sound Escapes is produced by Mark Bramhill and John Kessler. Ashley Ahearn is our editor. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Sound Escapes illustration by Jia-yi Liu

Next Episode

The Poetics of Space

This week’s episode of Sound Escapes takes us to Pipestone Canyon in Eastern Washington, where you can hear a ridgetop wind come from a mile away. Here, you can not only listen to coyotes in the distance, but also how the coyote waves as it passes through the canyon: a form of dimensional information that Gordon Hempton calls, “The poetics of space.”

ID the birds in this episode: The Poetics of Space Bird List

Connect with BirdNote on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Sign up to receive BirdNote's weekly newsletter

Support for Sound Escapes comes from Jim and Birte Falconer of Seattle.

BirdNote Presents: Sound Escapes is produced by Mark Bramhill and John Kessler. Ashley Ahearn is our editor. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

Sound Escapes illustration by Jia-yi Liu