geoffsample.com
sound ecoacoustics humanimality
projects | listen | archive | contact | wildsong
Work with Marcus Coates
Conference for the Birds, Cherryburn 2019
I have collaborated with Marcus on a number of projects over the years, the latest one celebrating the work of Thomas Bewick. It involved becoming blackbird.
Participants in taxonomic order:
Grey Heron - Ceri Levy Dotterel - Marcus Coates Great Black-backed Gull - Sally Reay Roseate Tern - Tom Cadwallender Cuckoo - Helen Macdonald Blackbird - Geoff Sample Tree Sparrow - Muriel Cadwallender
Listen here to extracts on Marcus' site.
I thoroughly enjoyed my day discussing life as a blackbird. With a particular interest in blackbird song ever since I began wildlife recording, I’d spent much of the last decade following and interacting with the blackbird community centred on my back garden in Wooler. One male in particular I got to know over a four year period through a few signature motifs in his songs and a few quirks in his behaviour. Though never a big outstanding male bird, he was always very alert and self-assertive; and though he got to know me, coming to my whistle and several times even begging to me, he never became tame, would always keep a little distance and retained a shield of wariness.