We Loved It All

Finished February 23

We Loved It All: A Memory of Life by Lydia Millet

This is the first nonfiction book by the author and is very hard to classify as it includes so many different things. While Millet has written several works of fiction, she has also had a long career at the Center for Biological Diversity, advocating for wildlife and climate change preparedness. 

This book mixes her personal memories with scientific facts, vignettes of animal and plant interactions with humans, and thoughts about life in general. 

The book is split into three sections, and she works to show our connections to others' experiences, and to life beyond the human. You can feel her emotions around many of these elements. Paragraphs within sections jump from the personal to the other elements, and sometimes feel like an expression of a stream of consciousness, with one thought leading to another. 

There are many things here that reminded me of my own memories of interactions with nature, and that revived knowledge I forgot that I had. There are also times where she taught me something new. This is a book that is hard to rush through, that one needs to sit with, and take time to examine one's reactions and thoughts. 

Miracle Country

Finished September 3

Miracle Country by Kendra Atleework

This memoir draws you in to the author's life in beautiful prose. She grew up in Swall Meadows, a small town north of Bishop, California, in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, which lies between the Sierra Nevadas on the west, and the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the east. This is an area where the average annual rainfall is about 5 inches. For decades most of the water from this region has been collected and diverted to Los Angeles, making agriculture in the area extremely difficult. 

The memoir is not told chronologically, but moves around in time. It is separated into five parts: Wind; Wildflowers; Rivers; Moonrise; and Summit. It starts in 2015 with a fire that happened in the fourth year of a bad drought. This choice of beginning gives us a real sense of the environment and what the people there face. They have droughts, blizzards, and fire to deal with every year. 

Kendra is the oldest of three children, with a sister Kaela, and a brother Anthony. Her mother, Jan, was a teacher, avid hiker, and played flute in a local orchestra. Her father, Robert, has done a lot of different things since moving to the area as a young man. He has dredged streams, pumped gas, run a Greyhound office, flown hot air balloons, and runs a map company that makes maps of the region. He also built his own airplane, played trombone in the local orchestra, and is very tall, 6'8". I was intrigued by the house she grew up in, which was built by a retired engineer from the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power from old growth redwood that had been salvaged from water tanks in L.A. 

Kendra and her siblings grew up without television and had only local radio. Instead, they had stories, legends, history, and poetry. Their mother created special places and characters for them and they played in this way as they explored the world around them. 

Kendra's mother died when Kendra was sixteen, and the family fell apart gradually despite her father's efforts. She takes us through what she herself went through, and more briefly what her siblings have experienced. 

She gives us a lot of information about the area she lives in, the Owens Valley, known to the indigenous and Payahuunadu. She also includes a lot of history of the area, and gives passages from other writers that lived or passed through the region. One of these is Mary Austin, who came there in 1892, and witnessed the changes that happened when John Mulholland came up with the plan to capture the water for the city of Los Angeles, 250 miles south. She also talks about the indigenous, the Paiute, who were driven out of the area, into the desert to the east, but returned and stayed. 

Kendra went to college in Los Angeles, and grad school in Minnesota. 

She made the whole area come alive for me, as well as making her own experiences relatable and vivid. A fascinating book. 

Tapestries of Life

Finished August 20

Tapestries of Life: Uncovering the Lifesaving Secrets of the Natural World by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, translated by Lucy Moffat

This book, one I received as part of a book subscription from Mr. B's, is a fascinating look at all nature offers. I learned so many interesting things in the natural world, as well as how humans have taken from it. The author is a Norwegian conservation biologist who knows her subject very well. 

The book is organized with an introduction, ten chapters, and an afterword, and begins with a very personal preface that talks about her life and how she came to this work. She says "Curiosity and a capacity for wonderment are important to me as a scientist." Her aim for the book is to get people to appreciate the natural world enough to work to take care of it. 

In the introduction she talks about her encounter in a museum with a stuffed rhinoceros whose horns had been removed to avoid theft. This led her to think about the numerous smaller creatures that are disappearing. She also talks about the idea of nature as an ecosystem service that offers many benefits. Her third idea here is of the thin layer of earth where life exists, a mere 20 kilometres from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest and the reality that we are only one species among ten million that exist. 

The chapters each discuss one area of 'service' that nature provides, giving examples and making connections to these ideas by relating them to different aspects of human use. 

The first is Water of Life, where she talks about the necessity of water, how much of the earth's water is freshwater and available for use, and species that clean the water such as moss and mussels. 

The second is Grocery Store, which refers to what we take from the earth for food. She talks about microbes and insects, how we use arable land, the role of megafauna in the environment, and the health of the oceans. She also introduces the idea of shifting baseline syndrome, a kind of collective amnesia where we don't see the changes that have happened over time. 

The third chapter is Biggest Buzz, where she begins with coffee, connecting that to pollination, and the interdependence of species in growth, survival of species, and renewal.

The fourth chapter iss Pharmacy, where she looks at the many plants that have been used in healthcare, from traditional medicine to synthetic versions of naturally existing remedies. She talks about the importance of safeguarding traditional knowledge, the long history of medicinal use of natural plants and fungi, and what we are still learning from other creatures and plants. 

The fifth is Fibre Factory, nature that provides us with cloth, building materials, and books. She also includes a discussion of energy from fires to biofuel here. The idea of cold light is one intriguing example. 

The sixth is Caretaking, how plants help to retain water and soil, prevent erosion, provide buffers against flooding, regulate temperature, and clean the air. Her description of the 'flying river' over the Amazon, bringing moisture back inland was one I hadn't known of before. She touches on the importance of old growth forests and how they are different from more managed forest area. One especially intriguing study to me was the reindeer on the Hardanger Plateau, where 323 reindeer died from a strike of lightning and scientist as studying what is happening to them as they decompose. 

Chapter seven is the Warp in the Tapestry of Life, which takes us deep into the world of micro organisms, as well as showing how creatures like whales transport nutrients and minerals, including carbon, from the surface to the ocean depths, and keep life going down there. She discusses the almost doubling change in CO² concentrations from the pre-Industrial world to today. This chapter also includes referent to the increased proximity of wild creatures to both us and domesticated animals as a key input to the rise of infectious diseases we are seeing move into humans, giving several examples. 

Chapter eight is Nature's Archives, a record over time of what has happened. She gives examples such as the samples that have been taken from Greenland in ice cores, comparing tree rings in standing dead trees and timber in old structures, and pollen levels in bogs. One study was able to use guano buildup in a disused chimney to see how the bird species' diet changed over time. 

The ninth chapter is An Ideas Bank for Every Occasion, which looks at how nature has given us inspiration for technological solutions to problems, She gives several fascinating examples here, showing us the inspirations for self-cleaning windows, bullet train design, colour in banknotes, and nanostructure films. She also talks about natures algorithms in efficiency, given movement of slime mould as an example. 

Chapter ten gives us Nature's Cathedral, a place where great thoughts take shape, and the feeling that we get when we spend time in nature, whether forest bathing or listening to birds in our own backyards. She shows research on the role of nature in mental health, robust immune systems, and the intrinsic value of nature itself. 

The afterword gives an element of hope to readers, and ideas of what we can do to keep what exists now from disappearing. 

A fantastic read. 

This is the Boat that Ben Built

Finished September 25

This is the Boat that Ben Built by Jen Lynn Bailey, illustrated by Maggie Zeng

I loved the illustrations for this picture book, the colour nuances and the way the drawings suggested more beyond what was drawn. There are so many things to draw the eye and make one wonder. One prominent example is the girl and dog watching Ben throughout the book. They aren't in the boat with him, but seem glad to see what he's doing and at the end join him. 

The subtler ones include the butterfly jar on the boat. Sometimes it has a butterfly, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the jar isn't even there. 

There are so many things to look for and notice.

The words are also lovely and so well chosen. A cumulative tale like the classic "The House That Jack Built" rhyme, with the building up of additional elements and yet different too as the actions of the elements change at the high point of the story, creating a disturbance through a domino effect. 

The grey-green colours of the scenes in the book, landscape and water, provide a neutral, natural background that is soothing

The book also includes information after the story, here on the river ecosystem and the concept of ecosystems in general. It also gives information on the animals in the story, introducing concepts such predator and omnivore. The reader is also encouraged to think of ways to add to the story through the use of additional animals in the river ecosystem. 

I like how books like this encourage readers to explore the ideas presented more deeply, while still providing entertainment. 

Jen Lynn Bailey's background in and passion for environmental science and education lend itself to excellence in conveying the concepts here.

Summer at Little Lava

Finished August 10

Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World by Charles Fergus

This memoir is of a summer spent in a remote, off-the-grid house on a farm on the west coast of Iceland. The author is still reeling from the sudden and violent death of his mother and hopes that this time will help the healing. No roads lead to the house, and to get to it you must cross a wetland that is flooded twice a day by the tide. It is surrounded by lava fields and has views of mountains, volcanoes, and the rugged coastline. 

Fergus goes in late May and, working with an Icelandic friend does repairs to the abandoned house, making it weatherproof and fitting it with the basics. He and the friend had gone in December to do a reconnaissance and see what would be needed. There is no heat other than the fires that they make, no electricity, and no running water. They use one of the cold pools in a cleft in the lava field as a fridge, and get some supplies locally from neighbours. 

Once his wife and son join him and they buy a used car, they spend the summer exploring the country nearby, including on a collapsible kayak that he brings to have time in the nearby ocean, are visited by relatives undergoing their own healing journey, and enjoy watching the animals and birds and noting the local plants and geology. 

The author's wife Nancy had done graduate work on the Icelandic sagas, they had visited the country a few times together and Nancy had gone again to study the language. It was she who had discovered this farm and they had already planned the visit before the loss of the author's mother. Nancy has also found references to the farm dating back to 1354 and there are the remains of other structures on the property. 

This is a personal memoir of his own emotional journey, but also beautiful descriptions of the land and its occupants. This is a book to savour. 

If Only...

Finished September 4

If Only... by Mies van Hout, translated by David Colmer

This charming and vibrant picture book begins with a young child looking at a butterfly and wishing they could be that creature and move like that through the world. It then continues that idea with the butterfly looking at another small creature (a stick insect) and having a similar thought. The book continues through a wide variety of small creatures, each admiring something about another one, until it circles back to a creature looking at children. The pictures are colourful and intense and happy, with many of them intensely one colour (monochromatic) or close neighbours of colours (analogous) with just minor elements of a contrasting or complementary colour. This use of colour really adds to the appeal of the pictures.

At the end of the tale is a glossary of the creatures from the story, with small images of at least one example of each creature and a single sentence that gives some information on the nature of creature, including information on how they move, why they look the way they do, how they got the name they are commonly known by, where they live, or what they eat. 

Also at the back of the book is a helpful section on making collage images like some of the ones from the book. It gives a list of what is needed, and a easy to understand method of making art with collage and embellishing it. There is an additional sidebar for making self-painted paper to use for collage as well. 

I always enjoy the lovely books by this author and this one adds the fun element of small creatures that children are often fascinated by. 

Outside, You Notice

Finished September 3

Outside, You Notice by Erin Alladin, illustrated by Andrea Blinick

This picture book can be read on two levels. The easier level follows a pattern, continuing from the phrase "Outside, you notice..." with most of them beginning with "how". These include using different senses. Some examples are "How after the rain everything smells greener" and "How a strawberry tastes sweetest when you pick it yourself and eat it still warm from the sun". The illustrations include many details, but are also loose and playful, like sketches, and include many things going on. 

The second level of reading is more scientific, and includes a lot of factual information around the phrase for the double page spread. Again an example, for the pages where things smell greener, has four facts: that part of rain's smell is made of oils released by plants; some plant leaves are shaped like funnels to catch the rain; some trees have so many leaves that the ground beneath them can stay dry; and that plants drink through their roots. The pictures for this page include trees, plants, puddles, insects, animals, birds, two individual children enjoying the results of the rain in different ways, and more. It would be easy for spend several minutes on each set of pages noticing things and learning about the world around us. 

The text encourages the children to use smell, hearing, taste, touch, and sight to notice the world and the facts for each range from four to six for each scene. Many of the activities shown will make children want to do these things themselves, whether it is planting seeds or taking a hike. Some noticing encourages being still and some being on the move, some has us looking up and some looking down. At the end of the book, a page lists where the different scenes take place, in parks and yards, trails and gardens, and even playgrounds. This book will encourage healthy activity and engaging with the natural world. The author has a background in gardening and forestry that shows in the information presented here. 

The Wild Heavens

Finished August 13

The Wild Heavens by Sarah Louise Butler

This first novel, by a B.C. author is a winner. The main line of the story takes place over a 24-hour period, but the narrative also reaches into the past, all the way back to childhood. Sandy (Cassandra) Langley never knew her father, and when her mother died when she was young, her grandfather, Aidan Fitzpatrick, took her in. Aidan had a defining moment when he was a young man, one that resulted in him leaving his faith, and turning towards a life based in science and nature. He bought the land near where he'd had this experience and spent a lot of time in his cabin there in the interior of B.C. He carved a life-size statue of the creature he encountered and called it Charlie, a name that would become a codename for the creature among the small group of people who he shared the knowledge with. He became a large animal veterinarian, and both worked as a vet and taught. When he adds his granddaughter to his household, it is shortly after giving shelter to a victim of domestic abuse, Eva, and her son, Luke. Luke is around the same age as Sandy and the two soon became companions and studied together, first homeschooled and later taking the long trip into town for school. 

In the present day narrative, Sandy's children have left home and she lives alone in the cabin. The sound of a whiskey-jack wakes her in the night and she follows a trail up the nearby mountain and along the ridge, through the snow and mulling over the changing nature of the trail that she follows and various incidents from her past.

This story was mesmerizing, emotional with a touch of the otherworldly, with a deep basis in nature and the awe that experiencing it brings us. It is a story of yearning, of love, of relationships. A story of loss and of hope. As we gradually learn Sandy and Aidan's stories, and see their lives unfold, we care about what happens to them and wonder along with them about Charlie and his fate. 

A beautiful book.

The Barren Grounds

Finished July 25

The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson

This is an amazing beginning to a series of books for kids. The two main characters are indigenous, and the main theme is around the environment and respect.

As you can see from the top of the cover, the series is called The Misewa Saga, and Misewa is the name of the village that the children travel to in the book.

Morgan has been in foster care as far back as she can remember. The couple she is with now are trying hard to make her feel welcome and at home, but she has a problem trusting them due to her past experiences. Eli has only been in care more recently and he has a lot of memories of his family and ties to the indigenous community. He has arrived at the same home as Morgan more recently.

Eli likes to draw and one drawing he made intrigues both children. 

Morgan has ventured into the attic of the house they live in, an area that is unfinished, but has some construction work partially done. A small closet-like space there has the door painted over, not opened in a long time and she retreats into that space when she needs to be alone. When she and Eli attach the picture he drew to the wall there it seems to come alive and connect their world to the wintry one they can see there. And the animal they see moves toward them. 

As the children react, Morgan is fearful, but Eli is curious and wants to explore this new world. When Morgan follows him, they discover a world where an outsider has upset the balance of nature and caused immense damage to the environment and the creatures who live there. Their initial contact is the creature they saw, Ochek (Fisher). With Eli familiar with the indigenous language, and some of the behaviours and activities, Morgan finds herself connecting to her own past in an unexpected way.  As they encounter another creature Arik (Squirrel), the discover that they may be able to help this world recover what has been lost.

I found this book reminded me a bit of the world of Narnia, with a doorway into a wintry world where creatures talk and walk like humans. But it has a distinctly indigenous element, with the language and the ties to the living world. 

This promises to be a very interesting series.

A Quiet Girl

Finished September 4
A Quiet Girl by Peter Carnavas

I love the illustrations in Carnavas' books, both the way he draws nature and the quirky individualism of his human characters. But the other fantastic things about his books is the subtle, yet meaningful way in which he tackles larger issues and makes them real for kids.
Here we have Mary, a young girl who is thoughtful and quiet. We see her noticing the world around here (especially the individual noises different things make), engaging in thoughtful activities, and sharing them, quietly, with her family. But her family is loud, her using tools, devices, toys, and loud talk regularly. They don't hear here and tell her to talk louder. But Mary stays true to her self, and is a quiet girl. She becomes quieter and notices more and more things in the world around her, not just the sounds of it, but the sight of things, the smell of nature, and the feel of a breeze. She is present in her world in a meaningful way. At first her family just continued on with their normal noisy behaviours, making her feel like she wasn't even there. But then the did notice that she wasn't interacting with them, and they looked and called loudly for her. They didn't see or hear her. So they stopped and got quiet too, and listened, really listened. And they heard the noises of things around them, things that included Mary's voice singing a quiet small song as she fed the birds. And they realized what they had been missing in their normal activities.
The book includes a two page introduction to mindfulness at the end, giving some suggestions in how to be present in your world like Mary is in hers. I really like the last suggestion when they ask you to close your eyes and listen and identify the quietest sound that you can hear. Beautiful and simple to do and so, so satisfying.
Under the sound of my grandfather clock, the soft whish of my dehydrator in the kitchen, the hum of appliances, I can hear noises through the open window from outside, my cats' quiet breathing as they sleep near me, and feel the breeze coming through the window.

Before You Were Born

Finished April 30
Before You Were Born by Deborah Kerbel, illustrated by Suzanne Del Rizzo

This lovely book is a perfect gift for a new mother or father, and a perfect bedtime read for a little one, sending them to sleep with lovely images and the comfort of knowing how much they are loved. It tells through rhyming phrases of the parents' love for their child even before he or she arrived.
I loved this author/illustrator combination in a previous book Sun Dog, and this book was even better. The lyricism of Kerbel's words is beautiful, each phrase of anticipation leading you on to the next page. It just flows and the words are full of love. I loved the phrase "a mountain of promise, a valley of calm".
Del Rizzo's 3D illustrations using polymer clay bring everything to life, from the animals are birds, to the trees, flowers and other plants. And the details were just right: the lanterns hanging in the trees, the expressions of the faces of all the creatures, the feathers and fur and rubbery-looking noses, the surface of the moon, the bear's tongue, the raindrops on leaves,
One of my favourite is the scene of the birch forest, with a woman leaning on a tree, enjoying the world around her, with birds in the trees above, deer and foxes, and the water beyond. I wanted to step into it.
An absolutely beautiful picture book

Four Fields

Finished December 31
Four Fields by Tim Dee

This book has the author look at four vastly different fields, noting their features, the creatures that inhabit them, and their history.
The first field, and one he returns to in different seasons later in the book is his home field, the fens near Cambridge. Dee lives very close, and often ventures into the fields, birdwatching, walking or bicycling, and noting the changes that have taken place since his last visit.
His second field is a field in Zambia, near the country his wife comes from, and where he went with a local man to follow honeyguides to wild bees.
His third field is one in Montana, where George Custer lost his life, a field rich in history, and in life. The last field is the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl where he goes with researchers who annually take samples of local wildlife for testing. His job is to collect grasshoppers at each stop. This means that he pays attention to the noise of the life around him, to the activity on the ground, to the birds overhead.
This is a book of nature, of birds, of life going on, and life dying, and of history and the changes wrought over time, by both nature and man. A fascinating read.

Wandering Home

Finished January 16
Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape by Bill McKibben

This memoir covers a short period in the the author's life, a couple of weeks one summer where he walked from his home in Vermont (very near one of Robert Frost's homes) to a previous home in the New York state Adirondacks.
Along the way, he walks some of the time alone, and some of the time with friends from the area. He writes about the landscape he is moving through, the weather, the environmental issues, the social issues, the history of these places, and his own connections, memories, and impressions of these places.
There is a map at the front, showing his path for this trip. The people he visits and travels with include other authors, other environmentalists, historians, farmers, gardeners, vintners, beekeepers, river rafters, and historians. All the them have connections to the last themselves, and are in touch with nature and its wonder.
A book to savour, and one that makes you both hopeful and eager to go out and explore nature yourself.

The Wolf in Winter

Finished January 25
The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly, read by Jeff Harding

This is the 12th book in the series featuring private investigator Charlie Parker, but the first one I've read. Charlie lives in Maine, and his work sometimes takes him away from there, but this book is focused on that state. Charlie learns that a homeless man was looking to hire him to look into the disappearance of his daughter. As he begins to trace the girl and her father's search for her, he finds himself led to the small town of Prosperous. Prosperous takes pride in its history, tracing its founding families back to England. Those founders brought their church with them, yet the town strictly limits access to this church and its grounds. The selectmen of the town consider their role as protectors of the town, but what they get in return is more nebulous.
This is a story of dark forces, people that believe in the end justifying the means, and closely guarded secrets. Charlie is no stranger to any of this and he does his research and chooses his moves carefully, but perhaps not always carefully enough. Two of the men that work closely with him, Angel and Louis, also have roles to play, as does a man Charlie has been hunting. This is a book with both a strong detective mystery plot, and a horror plot entwined together. It also has many interesting characters, touches of humour, and has interested me in reading more in this series.

The Road is How

Finished August 6
The Road is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire, and Soul by Trevor Herriot

This book is the story of a journey, both physical and mental. It all starts with Herriot falling from a ladder doing home repairs. Reading a book during his recovery, he is convinced that he needs to do a journey in the form of a long walk. A native friend of his tells him that walking is a good idea, but that he needs to first go sit on a hill while fasting and figure out why he wants to go for a walk.
Herriot does this, and comes out of it with a few things. One is his imbalance in terms of personal relationships. He wants to understand his high level of desire, finding meaning in the relationship between a man and a woman in his own life, and grow up in terms of relationships. Second is that he wants to reawaken his spiritual side, and go with purpose toward what comes next in his life. Third is that he needed to look inside himself to things that needed changing. After thinking about it, and recognizing his strong connection with nature, especially with birdlife, he determines to walk from his home in Regina to his cabin about forty miles east of the city.
He knows he will have a make a few detours from a straight path, but he will go as straight as he can, along roads, road allowances, and fence lines. Along the way he notices his surroundings, the subtle changes in landscape, the animals, birds, and people he encounters. He also reflects, on his relationship with his wife Karen, on his strong sexual desires, on his feelings toward women generally, on the birds and their environment that he has advocated for, on his male bonding experiences, on his connections with nature.
At times I found his musings too nebulous to be meaningful to me as a reader, but this is his story, and he needs to express himself in the way that makes sense to him. His journey is interesting, and he does seem to get something from it, and that is what really matters.

The Wilding

Finished June 17
The Wilding by Benjamin Percy

This novel is about a man, his relationships with his father, his wife, and his son. But it is also a tale of the wild nature in all of us. There are three main speakers: Justin, a schoolteacher who has never lived up to his father's expectations of male behaviour; Karen, Justin's wife, who has largely withdrawn from their marriage after the stillborn death of their second child years before; and Brian, a young man, suffering both physically and mentally from injuries received in Iraq.
Justin works hard at his job, but has left the house repairs slide lately due to his heavy workload. He still loves Karen strongly, but has almost stopped trying to connect with her after repeated rejections. His father is a man's man, and wants to take Justin and his sixth-grade son Graham on a weekend hunting trip at the spot he and Justin go to every year, as the area is slated for development. This will be Graham's first hunting trip.
Karen is obsessed with exercise, running daily and cooking only healthy, organic food she has carefully researched and bought. She is also obsessed with the obverse, looking up ugly diseases and disgusting illnesses on the internet to make herself feel better. She has no respect for Justin, but there seems to be little rational reason for her feelings toward him. Having lost one child, she is protective of Graham, and worried about the influence of Justin's father Paul.
Brian suffered a head injury in Iraq when a bomb sent off near the vehicle he was in, and has bad headaches and unexpected mood changes as a result. He lives alone, operating the business he inherited from his father, and is obsessed with the idea of becoming a wild animal.
The hunting trip is a opportunity for Paul to orient Graham to hunting, and yet Justin shows himself to be comfortable in this environment, a man who knows how to do things and worries about things appropriately.
When the presence of a bear becomes apparent, Justin must decide how much he is willing to risk for his family, and whether he can overcome his father's authority to protect Graham.
Karen also finds herself put in the position to make a choice that will affect her family, and she finds herself strangely pliant in the face of another's wishes.
Brian is drawn to Karen after meeting her through work, and yet also drawn to the wildness in himself. He will be forced to make a choice as well.
I liked the immediacy of nature in this book, from the two instances with the owls to the setting of the hunting camp and the recurring bear. The native story about nature and its revenge was also an interesting element.

Vanishing Wildlife

Finished May 23
Vanishing Wildlife: a sound guide to Britain's endangered species from the British Library Sound Archives

This recording collects sounds from 31 different wildlife species, letting the listener experience the noises they may never be able to listen to in the wild.
Sounds included her are: Captercaillie, Scottish Crossbill; Red Squirrel; Scottish Wildcat; Pine Marten; Black Grouse; Hen Harrier; Woodlark; Nightjar; Stone Curlew; Red-backed Shrike; Adder; Natterjack Toad; Wryneck; New Forest Cicada; Bittern; Marsh Warbler; Black tailed Godwit; Otter; Pool Frog; Mole Cricket; Noctule Bat; Pipistrelle Bat; White-tailed Sea Eagle; Roseate Tern; Greater Horseshoe Bat; Corncrake; Quail; Cirl Bunting; Wart-biter; and Field Cricket.
I really liked the bats, trying to think how to describe the sounds they make the best I could come up with was a kind of damp squeaking.
The nightjar noise would give me a headache if it went on much longer than it did here, but most of the other birds were very pleasant to listen to, inducing a feeling of pleasure and stress release.
Some noises were surprising, others what you would expect.
This is a lovely and unique collection for any animal lover.