Listening to the Landscape: Holbrook

This recording was made on the morning of Christmas Day 2024 in a residential village garden at around 11am. I had wondered if the soundscape would be different on Christmas Day; quieter perhaps? The usual songbirds are captured in full flow, but background traffic can still be heard and planes are still travelling across the sky, so perhaps this recording is not much different to any other made at the same time on any other day of the year. What, if anything, does this say anything about modern village life in the 21st century?

This underwater recording was made at Alton Water reservoir using hydrophones. The recent hot weather had lowered the level the reservoir, revealing tree roots and fine collection of previously lost tennis balls. I suspended by hydrophones from some low hanging branches so that they were around 30cm from the surface of the water. The clicks of underwater creatures and air being released by plants can clearly be heard. As can the quite unpleasant drone of what I assume is a powered boat that was being repaired some 500 metres away. Towards the end of the recording, a feeding fish came along and created some interesting sounds as it weaved around the tree roots.

This recording was made at dusk in a rural garden in the village of Holbrook, Suffolk. Whilst sat indoors with the patio doors open, my ears were suddenly attracted to an amazing array of bird sounds coming from the garden. My bird identification skills are poor, and so my first thought was that the calls were coming from one of our resident starlings. A quick check with the Merlin app revealed that in was in fact a song thrush. I can’t remember hearing one in our garden before and, try as I might, I couldn’t locate the bird visually in any tree. The range of pops, whoops, trills and everything in between was stunning (as can be seen in the snippet of the Merlin App's spectrogram that has been used for the recording's image). I hope the bird returns regularly to showcase its skills. The recording also showcases the return of the swifts to Holbrook for another year. They arrived on the 30th April this year - this was eight days earlier than last year. Initially, there were a group of eleven birds screaming around the road, but now only two or occasionally three can be seen and heard. Other birds featured include a robin, rooks, blackbirds, wood pigeon and jackdaws. You can also hear at least one plane flying over, the 9pm chiming of the automated bells at the Royal Hospital School and the constant drone of a temporary swimming pool, recently re-erected in a nearby garden.

This recording was made in a wooded area in the village of Holbrook between 5:00am and 5:19am on Sunday 4th May 2025 as part of the International Dawn Chorus weekend. Birds identified by the Merlin app include: pheasant, great tit, garden warbler, blue tit, chiffchaff, rook, wren, blackcap, robin, blackbird, song thrush, woodpigeon and greylag goose. There was also something rustling around in the bushes...

This recording features two (or more) Tawny owls calling to each other in the gardens around my house, and was captured just after midnight on Boxing Day 2024. The surrounding area was peacefully quiet with only one solitary car passing. The mist that had covered the country for a few days was dripping from the branches of our garden trees and falling from the guttering, but the evening was dry. The owls couldn't be seen, and seem to be moving around between calls. It was a wonderfully peaceful way to close out Christmas Day.

I have heard it said that Suffolk is the driest county in England (although I have not found any concrete evidence to back this claim up). Trying to grow crops in a dry climate will require irrigation of some kind, and with any farm machinery comes interesting sounds and rhythms. Enter the Briggs Irrigation Hosereel, Mounted Booms and Roto Rainer. This equipment can often be found snaking across fields, irrigating crops without the need for human operation. They deliciously spray, hiss and drip water from the boom end whilst the hosereel drones, ticks and whirs as it winds and coils the thick black pipe back on the reel. Capturing the sounds of modern farming around the village has been hit and miss this year. We were on holiday when the main harvesting was completed meaning that I failed to record any combine harvesters, so it was nice to record this machinery in action. Just before 3pm I positioned my gear around 30 metres from the equipment, hit record and listened to how the system affected the soundscape. Being in quite an open area of arable land, the wind was whipping over the field and a few birds could be heard in the nearby hedges. The area is a popular hunting ground for a few kestrels, although I didn’t see any on this day. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Home to both the village hall and quoits club, the Holbrook village green sits almost slap bang in the centre of the village. With the COOP supermarket, Methodist Hall, Swan public house and an independent butcher all nearby, this area of the village is the central hub of village life. A member of the village community informed me that the old air raid siren was located by the village hall and was sounded to call the members of the fire brigade to action. Some research into this suggests that using sirens was not uncommon in Britain after Second World War, and that not everyone was happy about this. I think that people who had lived throughout the blitz would have been quite traumatized hearing the siren for decades after. There is a village in Suffolk that still maintains its siren and who test it each May. A similar sound can also be heard in Norfolk (near Holkham and Well-Next-The-Sea) to announce that the tide changing. What interests me sonically about the village green in the present day is its flagpole, upon which the union flag is raised and lowered daily like many other villages across the country. Even the gentlest breeze causes the rope to clang and vibrate against the metal pole. I wanted to record the sound of the rope clanging against the pole with both traditional microphones and contact microphones, and hoped that the clanging could be used for the rhythmical element of a composition. On a breezy day I set up the equipment just before noon and sat back to listen. There was a palpable hum of activity as people came to run errands or shop. And, as always, a pigeon could be heard cooing away. Whilst I was recording, the sound of the dustbin lorry approaching could soon be heard. This sound is one of the regular sounds of any community and the hissing and clanking of the heavy lorry can often jar your focus from whatever task you are currently doing to run out and check that your bin is ready for collection (as missing it would mean a lengthy period of time until they would return). I love the sounds of a bin collection: the hissing of air brakes, pneumatic lifting, the drones of an emptied wheely bin wheels on concrete, the slamming of lids and occasional shouts from the workers, and (if you are lucky) the beeping warning sound of the vehicle reversing. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Back in mid-August, a member of the local Greener Holbrook climate action group had commented that they had enjoyed the sound of grasshoppers at All Saints church on a sultry Sunday afternoon. This sort of instant, local information is an amazing resource to have for a sound recordist, and having previously recorded the early morning sounds of the church yard in January and the bee hives in May, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to make a different recording. At around 11am on the 19th of August I entered the churchyard and headed to the location mentioned on Facebook; an area of the church yard left un-mown to encourage wildlife. The weather report had promised a mainly sunny day, but with quite a robust breeze and before long I could hear some faint chirps and clicks coming from the long grass. I positioned my equipment and sat down to listen. There was a steady drone of buzzing and the occasional grasshopper call along with the faint rustle of the dry grass in the breeze and another ever-present sound of the wood pigeon. Researching grasshoppers later on that day I discovered that they are more sonically active in the afternoon, and the hotter and sunnier the conditions the better, but the recording below captures the sound of village insects during only free time I had available on that day.

In an attempt to attract pollinators to visit our small front garden, we had left the lawn untouched by the mower for well over a year. This had resulted in the lawn grass growing over a metre high before it had collapsed and fallen during heavy wind and rain in the spring of 2024. I decided to try something different in the space by building a stag beetle pyramid. Whilst using the mower to clear an area for the buried logs, I discovered that ants had built an impressive nest rising up around 30cm from the ground. I felt guilty that the nest once totally hidden by the tall grass was now exposed to the hedgerow birds, but hoped that the ants would move on (or down) to a new location. Grabbing my Zoom recorder and some contact microphones I was able to explore the sounds within the nest as thousands of ants moved through the soil. I tried to use my LOM Geophon, but it was significantly affected by the gusts of wind whipping along the road. The resulting recording reminds me of white noise used by some people for relaxation or as a sleep aid. By the next day, no ants could be seen on or around the nest so I was able to create the stag beetle pyramid. In future I will make sure to check the long grass before starting work. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Rooks are a wonderful, if inescapable, part of my daily life. At the north end of the village there are at least four rookeries to be found high in the trees, and our home is sandwiched between two of them. The power of their cawing choir is astonishing as they call to both greet and bid goodbye to the daylight. They seem happy in all weathers but my favourite is their aerial display in squalling winds where their sheer number can obliterate the sky. Last year, whilst walking in a neighbouring village, I witnessed two rooks working in tandem to force a much larger buzzard to beat a hasty retreat. Rooks have featured in my previous podcast recordings, but here they take centre stage during a recent thunderstorm. Late one Sunday afternoon, I could hear the sound of thunder in the distance. In anticipation I grabbed my recording kit and set up in a covered area of my patio. For a few minutes the rooks cried hullabaloo before quieting down. Were they anticipating that the storm was moving our way? Who can say, but this recording captures how around each clap of thunder they cry havoc before heavy rain drowns them out. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

An exciting part of this project has been trying to find the hidden sounds of the village. By this, I mean the sounds that cannot usually be heard by the naked ear (as it were), and that can only be heard and recorded using hydrophones (underwater microphones), contact microphones (which pick up vibrations in solid objects) and a geophone (that picks up faint seismic vibrations). I have also just acquired a cheap bat detector. Each of these 'hidden sound' techniques can reveal fantastic hidden worlds that can blow your mind and help you to experience the world differently. But the process can also be massively frustrating having spent hours out in the field attaching microphones to trees and flagpoles without finding any interesting sounds! It was pleasing to finally get a half-decent underwater recording on the 4th July using some Jez Riley made hydrophones. The recording splices together four different recordings made at four locations along the watercourse that gives Holbrook its name. Throughout the piece you can hear the chirps ands clicks of unseen invertebrates, along with what I assume to be the sound of bubbles being released by plants. The sounds were very faint on the original recording, so I have needed to amplify and then use some noise reduction techniques to try and remove some hiss. Some high-pass filtering was also applied to filter out a light aircraft that passed overhead. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

This recording was made at noon whilst stood on a wooded footpath (labelled as footpath 1 on the definitive parish map) behind the Alton Water water treatment works. This is the first real industrial sound I have managed to capture in Holbrook. An ivy-covered fence prevented me from discerning exactly what was going on, but it is possibly the sound of a large tanker being filled (or emptied). The noise obliterated nearly all other sounds in the vicinity for the 20 minutes I stood there (this recording is an edit). At around the two minute mark there's a sudden change as whatever industrial process is being carried out is altered. If you listen with headphones the occasional bird can be heard: possibly a jackdaw and pheasant. I have walked this path numerous times in the past at weekends and never heard anything like it; perhaps it was a rare event or the process only occurs in the week? As the site processes over 10 million gallons of water each day, I wonder what other sounds can be heard at different times of day, week and throughout the year? This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Tucked away at the edge of the churchyard (behind a formidable growth of nettles and centuries old gravestones) are a number of bee hives. These were silent when I first saw them back in January, but on this sunny day in June they were alive with the coming and going of bees. I was careful not to disturb their work as I set up my equipment, and spent ten minutes watching them fly off across the fields (almost always in an Easterly direction). Also present in the recording is a police helicopter flying over, the usual aircraft coming and going from Luton and Stanstead and a rather vocal pigeon. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

There are not many animal sounds connected to farming to be heard in modern-day Holbrook; with the exception of a few flocks of sheep. The sheep featured on this recording were down by the creek in a field close to the location of the old brick works. A footpath passes through the field they were being held in, and the inquisitive lambs would eyeball me as I strolled though towards the creek with my kit. I had spent a good few hours in the creek trying to discover if any underwater sounds could be found at high tide. As I followed the brook back towards the village I saw that a ewe and her two lambs were close to the fence eating the grass. I quickly popped my recorder onto the top of the gatepost and stood back. The animals were non-plussed about my presence, and continued eating and playing. I’m not sure I have ever really watched sheep up close for any length of time – it is amazing just how much grass they eat and how quickly. You can hear the sound of them tearing it from the ground on the recording (which was cut a little shorter than I would have liked thanks to a  sudden downpour of rain). Other lambs can be heard calling out in the distance along with birdsong, the Royal Hospital School bells and the ubiquitous drone of garden machinery. I am unsure of the breed of sheep on the recording, but hope that they are Suffolks -  a breed that appear in Haruki Murakami’s 'A Wild Sheep Chase' (which I have recently reread). This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

This is the first of my village recordings to have taken place inside a building; that of All Saints Church. The church sits in the heart of the village, and is open to the public during the week for quiet reflection. I wanted to capture the ambiance of the building and to see if any sounds of the building creaking etc. could be heard. Despite trying on two occasions any interior sounds were largely absent. Instead, the thick walls filter out most of the the village soundscape, with the noise of a lawnmower, planes and passing cars being some of the only discernible sounds. This is in stark contrast to the bubbling atmosphere of services (especially the Christmas crib service). As the only visitor during that particular time of day, it was an immensely peaceful time. My recording equipment was positioned before the substantial memorial to Judge John Clench (c. 1535 - 1607). Clench owned land in and around Holbrook and was an English judge, a Serjeant-at-Law, Baron of the Exchequer and Justice of the Queen's Bench during the late Tudor period. Clench was present at the hearing of Margaret Clitherow of York; a catholic woman accused of harbouring Catholic but who refused to to enter a plea. She was subsequently pressed to death by a sharp rock being placed under her back, her own front door placed over her body and a huge weight of rocks and stones piled on top. It is said that it took her 15 minutes to die and that her body was left like this for six hours. She was pregnant with her fourth child at the time. I would like to extend by gratitude to the Reverend Jenny Seggar for allowing me to record on church property. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

A welcome sound returned to the village on Wednesday 8th May when I heard the familiar scream of a swift for the first time in 2024. I grew up in and semi-rural town on the outskirts of Birmingham, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard a swift until we moved to Suffolk. And back in 2015 they were pretty hard to miss. I can remember being mesmerised by the regular summer evening 'screaming parties' where gangs of birds would terrorise the skies by chasing each other around. Often they would fly straight at the East facing wall of our house before suddenly pulling out of their kamikaze mission to fly vertically up and away. In 2018, a neighbour found an exhausted bird on their lawn that was unable to take off and so at risk of being attacked by a dog. Between us (after consulting the internet) we managed to fling it skyward and see it shoot off in pursuit of the others. In 2022 I began noting the date on my calendar as to the first day I noticed that they were back in Holbrook. In 2022 it was the 10th May, in 2023 it was the 11th of May and (as already mentioned) it was the 8th May. I also record my sightings on the free swift-mapper app, and this year received a swift box. Alas, the box remains on the ground at present as I work up the courage to scale a tall enough ladder to fix it into position. I haven't kept records beyond these past three years, but it is clear that there are fewer swift above my house than nine year's ago. My feeling is that there were 30+ birds in 2015 and, so far, in 2024 I have counted a maximum of ten in the sky at any one time. The swift is globally threatened with UK numbers having fallen by some 40% over the last decade. Their decline has been linked to the fall in insect numbers and nesting sites in older buildings. In 2021 the species was added to the red list of the 2021 UK Conservation Status Report. What can be done to improve their chances? The recording below was made on Sunday 19th May 2024 in my garden, and features swift making the occasional dramatic flyby, a variety of garden birds and pollinators visiting our rodedendrum bush. I think the swift might be microphone shy as this was my seventh attempt to record them... This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

This recording was made between 5:05 and 5:25am on Sunday 5th May 2024 down at Holbrook Creek as part of the Reveil 11 ‘24 hour global broadcast’ of the dawn chorus (the official sunrise time at the creek was 5:16 am). It was really misty when I set up my gear on a fallen tree on the northern shore of the river Stour. The mist gradually lifted and the birdsong began from the mudflats in front and the woodlands behind. The creek was once a working environment with a brickworks and a couple of jetties that transported agricultural goods from Suffolk to London and received London’s refuse in return. The rubbish included horse muck which was spread on the land, but also included broken pottery which today can still be found on the surface of the fields. The brickworks and transportation links are long gone, but this tidal river is a haven for birds and enjoyed by visitors from the local villages. In total, I recorded for over an hour at the location and the Merlin app identified the following birds (not all will feature in this recording): Blackbird, Robin, Greater Whitethroat, Blue Tit, Wood-Pigeon, Dunnock, Carrion Crow, Ring-necked Pheasant, Wren, Great Tit, Blackcap, Common Cuckoo, Black-headed Gull, Marsh Warbler, Rook, Skylark, Goldfinch, Chiffchaff, Graylag Goose and Oystercatcher. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Holbrook Creek sits within the Suffolk Coast & Heaths National Landscape (formerly called an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The landscape is predominantly ancient estate farmlands, with salt marshes and intertidal mudflats. The mudflats are an important winter feeding area for estuary birds, wild fowl and waders. This recording was made on a particularly windy Wednesday afternoon whilst testing my equipment for an upcoming dawn chorus broadcast. I sat upon one of the many fallen trees that, thanks to coastal erosion, now haunt the shorline. From the tree I was able to see across the river into Essex, and occasionally thought I could see the sunlight glinting on Grayson Perry's 'House for Essex'. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me if you have any concerns]

A 2012 hedgerow report states Holbrook had 468 hedges running for a total a distance of 41km (25 miles) within the parish. They are nature's corridors and provide cover for animals to move between habitats. They also provide shelter for walkers seeking a brief refuge from the wind that often rips across the open fields. Holbrook's hedges line many of the footpaths and roads in and around the village. This recording captures the sounds within a hedge on a grey morning in February. I was enthralled by the bird sounds the recording captured within ten minutes. The sounds within the hedge were totally different to those outside of it. The Merlin bird app identified: blue tit, great tit, song thrush, magpie, rook, robin, jackdaw, graylag goose, long-tailed tit, blackbird, mistle thrush, goldfinch and jackdaw. Also present is the drone of a leaf blower, a tractor and two flights passing overhead: one from Heathrow to Vienna and one from Budapest to Stanstead. More information about Suffolk's hedgerows can be found here: https://suffolkbis.org.uk/hedgerow This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me if you have any concerns]

The latest of my modern day field recordings was made and uploaded on Wednesday 7th February. It explores the sounds of water within the parish. The Merlin app identified: robin, skylark, blue tit, great tit, grey wagtail, blackbird, mistle thrush, chaffinch, rook, goldfinch, wren, coal tit, siskin and song thrush. A deer stood stock still and watched me from a distance of 300m. A buzzard flew out from the trees above my head and out to perch and wait and watch. Watch and wait. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me if you have any concerns]

Work, windy weather and a very tickly cough made field recording a little tricky this week. However, I took inspiration from it being the RSPB 'Big Garden Birdwatch' to capture a recording of my garden whilst we tallied up the starlings, sparrows and other winged visitors to our garden. Also present in the recording are some very hungry chickens (we fed them soon after). I know at least six other village houses with chickens, and wonder how this compares with life in the village a century ago? Did every house keep domestic fowl for easy access to eggs? This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me if you have any concerns]

The third week of January 2024 was a cold one in Suffolk. The ice permeated deep into the soil. We wrapped up warm as bitter Northerly winds screamed across fields and howled down chimneys. This recording is of an air source heat pump that had started to freeze. The clicking sound is that of the fan catching on the ice as it rotates with some birdsong in the distance. It created a satisfying, drifting, rhythm until warmer air came and defrosted the machine. This recording was captured at 7am on Wednesday 17th January on a Zoom h1n when the air temperature was around -1c (it had been as low as -5c). I had attempted to record the sound the previous night, but the icy conditions were causing the Zoom recorder to make popping sounds as its plastic case started to freeze. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me through my website if you have any concerns - https://www.matthewshenton.co.uk]

A field recording session from the grounds of All Saints Church in Holbrook (Suffolk, UK) made on the morning of the 13th January 2024 at 8am. It was a cold, dull morning with a light wind. A fox ran between the gravestones as I entered the grounds. Three planes flew overhead: from Wroclaw and Krakow towards Stanstead, and one from Stanstead to Vienna. Village sounds heard include the flagpole rattling at the fire station, a distant bird scarer and the chimes of the Royal Hospital School clock. The Merlin app by Cornell Birds identified the following birds: great tit, blue tit, long tailed tit, robin, magpie and jackdaw. This episode was made possible through funding from Arts Council England through their Developing Your Creative Practice grant. [This field recording was recorded to showcase the natural sounds heard in a rural setting. It features no human voices. No monies will be made from the recording. Please contact me if you have any concerns]