The Listener Podcast

[PREVIEW] When tranquility is broken

[PREVIEW] The Pheasant.

There’s a bird in Scotland that never truly belonged there, yet somehow became part of the soul of the landscape. The Pheasant. Originally from Asia, introduced into the UK for one reason only… to be shot for sport. I li

[PREVIEW] Plastic and Midway

Over a million seabirds. Albatross chicks scattered across the sand. Dolphins offshore. Monk seals resting on the beaches. One of the most alive places I have ever experienced. Those albatross chicks weren’t just being f

Rain symphony

There’s something about rain that most people miss. To many, it’s an inconvenience… something to escape from. To me, it’s music. Rain creates its own orchestra, each surface a different instrument. I’ve recorded it all o

Grasshopper warbler

There are moments in life that quietly reshape you. Not with noise or drama… but with something subtle. Unexpected. For me, one of those moments came just outside the suburbs of Birmingham. I had travelled out toward the

Eagles

I’ve always loved eagles. Not just admired them… loved them. The first time I saw one was in Scotland in 1978, over Glencoe. A golden eagle riding the thermals above Rannoch Moor. It wasn’t flying… it was owning the sky.

Missing!

There was a time when you couldn’t look at the sky without hearing it. Not one bird… but many I remember lying on my back in a field as a boy, watching skylarks climb higher and higher until they disappeared from sight…

Sound as a barometer

I have spent a lifetime listening. Not just hearing… but truly listening to the voice of the Earth. Because sound tells us things that our eyes cannot. A forest can still look whole… A river can still appear to flow… A l

When is a bird not a bird

I recently had an email questioning a bird I logged on Cornell’s eBird. The reviewer suggested the call I recorded was a Magnolia Warbler rather than the Red eyed Vireo I had listed. He explained that Magnolia Warblers c

A Life in Sound

This is Martyn Stewart… with a life in sound from The Listening Planet. Recently I returned to England. Home. The place where everything began. But this time the journey was different. Someone had recommended me for an h

Geophony: The Earth speaking

Birds are not the only musicians in Earth’s orchestra. Amphibians, insects, mammals and marine life all play their part. But there is another section that moves me just as deeply. The sound of the planet itself. Wind. Ra

Night Insects

When darkness falls most people think the world becomes quiet. But listen carefully. The night is speaking. Katydids in the trees. Crickets in the grass. Cicadas vibrating through the air. These are not background sounds

What happens when the natural world falls silent?

What is silence? For most people it means peace and quiet. But for me, silence is something very different. It is not the absence of sound, but the absence of life’s voices — the birds, the insects, the wild chorus we ca

Reed Warblers

I want to share a small story with you. Many years ago, standing beside a quiet pond in the Wye Valley, I recorded my first reed warbler. A tiny bird hidden deep in the reeds, yet its voice filled the entire landscape wi

Birding across the continent

I live in the United States now — in Florida — though for more than twenty years Washington State was my home. The human voices around me carry a different accent from my British one, yet in the natural world, especially

This is why I listen.

I’ve realised over the years that you have to be a certain kind of person to do what I’ve done most of my life. I can sit for hours, barely moving, listening. Not thinking. Just being. People often ask what’s going throu

Scaled Antpitta

In the cloud forests of Costa Rica, some voices don’t give themselves up easily. This little bird, the Scaled Antpitta , speaks in low, trembling notes that melt into the forest rather than rise above it. When I first he

When it's gone

Sometimes I ask people to listen… to silence. That silence could be the Irish elk. That silence could be the dodo. Extinction doesn’t just remove an animal. It removes a voice from the planet forever. During my lifetime,

Southern elephant seal

Standing among an elephant seal colony is like stepping into another language. If a human made these sounds—deep belches, coughing roars, wet grunts—we’d probably turn away in embarrassment. On a Patagonian beach, they a

White tailed eagle

I first began recording in Scotland in 1975, the same year the white-tailed eagle began its slow return. Before that, the bird had been hunted, poisoned and persecuted until it vanished from our skies. Its disappearance