Nature Tripping Episode 26 - Sounds from a Hebridean Coast

It’s always a pleasure to hear from our listeners and on occasion people have asked for an episode dedicated purely to nature sounds. This is one such episode.  It’s a compilation of ambient field recordings made around the coastline of the Hebridean island of Tiree.  Slow radio indeed, and we recommend listening on headphones.

This is an energetic and vibrant landscape.  You can immerse yourself in the elemental sounds of waves and wind, and experience a wide variety of birdlife.  We begin the episode with the faint cry of sea eagles high in the sky, then move back to the seashore, plunging down to listen to the underwater sounds of a limpet steadily munching its way across a rock, and the popping and crackling of a forest of sea kelp. Back on dry land and a little way inshore a fulmar colony prepares for the 2024 breeding season on a small cliff outcrop, in the close company of nearby starlings.  We also meet common gulls, oyster catchers and redshank going about daily life on the shore and as darkness falls pay a visit to a grassy shoreline field to hear the night-time activity of snipe and graylag geese, before finally returning to the waves.

Scarinish shoreline, Isle of Tiree