listen to africa

These two ten month old, orphaned spotted hyaena pups (reared in captivity) were still being bottle fed, partly – a task which both they and Alain (the Frenchman raising them) seemed to love. Here, you can hear Alain feeding them breakfast – four or five bottles of milk each, slurped down in record time.

Species: Crocuta crocuta
Common name: Spotted Hyaena (Hyena)
Date and time recorded: 09:28 local time, 31st August 2009
Location: Near Mbodiene, Senegal (view on map)
Equipment: Audio-Technica AT897 via FEL MicBooster MB-1 to Fostex FR2LE
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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As well as three jackals, Alain is raising two orphaned spotted hyaenas, now ten months old, which he is also hoping to release into a reserve one day soon. Raised almost entirely in captivity and accustomed to interacting with humans, it was amazing how much this pair resembled pet dogs in their behaviour – although their vocalisations, especially this contact call, were unmistakably hyaena-like.

Species: Crocuta crocuta
Common name: Spotted Hyaena (Hyena)
Date and time recorded: 13:18 local time, 30th August 2009
Location: Near Mbodiene, Senegal (view on map)
Equipment: Audio-Technica AT897 via FEL MicBooster MB-1 to Fostex FR2LE
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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There were thousands and thousands of crabs in the area around Mbodiene, Senegal – where we took our two week holiday from the bikes. Bex was sitting on a bank trying to record the sound of one crab digging and bubbling away in its hole when this one, a neighbouring crab, blithely popped its head out of its hole, noticed the huge, furry microphone and quickly dived back into safety again.

Date and time recorded: 12:54 local time, 30th August 2009
Location: Near Mbodiene, Senegal (view on map)
Equipment: Audio-Technica AT897 via FEL MicBooster MB-1 to Fostex FR2LE
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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This is the first of several wildlife recordings we’ll be posting over the next few days from our two week stay with Alain and Alicia, at their camp (Le Thiossane, a wildlife paradise) next to a lagoon by Senegal’s Atlantic Coast. If you were near a cricket (or is it a cicada?) when it began chirruping, the noise was so loud it brought all conversation to a standstill.

Date and time recorded: 20:05 local time, 1st September 2009
Location: Near Mbodiene, Senegal (view on map)
Equipment: Audio-Technica AT897 via FEL MicBooster MB-1 to Fostex FR2LE
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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One of the biggest joys of recording sounds is that you start to learn to listen. Our whole journey is turning into a (very long) soundwalk. Recording these drips percolating through rocks and dripping down ferns into a little stream at Terjit Oasis, I found myself deeply impressed by the musicality of the water (an impression that was probably amplified by the fact this was the first naturally occurring water we’d heard in our two months in the Sahara, apart from the ocean). One Mauritanian who’d never been to Terjit before said to us: “I never knew this kind of place existed: infinite water, coming down from God.”

Date and time recorded: 09:00 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Ah, Terjit. On the evening of the day we left Atar, we crawled into Terjit Oasis – almost literally – with broken bikes and suffering bodies (more about all that soon, in the blog). Streams, rockpools (to swim in!), date palms, toads, glow worms, fireflies, cicadas, birds: a feast for our ears and eyes after two months of deserts and cities.

Date and time recorded: 06:50 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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A large, mixed group of terns, recorded at the Cap Blanc peninsula reserve in northern Mauritania. The group was dominated by Caspian Terns, but included other terns which we weren’t able to conclusively identify; the Little, Sandwich, Royal and Gull-Billed Terns are all found in this area.

Species: Sterna caspia and other terns
Common name (English): Caspian Tern and other terns
Date and time recorded: 14:30 local time, 30th July 2009
Location: Cap Blanc, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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If the sounds section of the website has been a bit quiet of late, it’s because pedalling through the Sahara has been anything but. Wind. Almost constant wind. And, even though it’s meant we haven’t been able to record any birds here, we’ve learned to love this sound; it’s usually a tailwind. This is the sound of the wind blowing through a pile of rocks that marked a junction between a sand track and the main road.

Recorded on: 9th July 2009, 20:10 local time.
Location: The Sahara, Western Sahara (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa

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Update: For the latest on the audio equipment, including a six month review on how the kit has performed and why we’ve made some recent additions, please read the six month update.

I’d like to welcome you to the first in a series of audio equipment blogs. This is also a first for me, having never written a blog before. I usually plod away in the background in my own little technical world and leave others to communicate with the wider world, so please forgive me if I’m not conforming to the norms – I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it in time!

Because our expedition will pass through a myriad of environments – from the extreme heat and dust of the Sahara to the hot, humid tropical rainforests of Central Africa (not forgetting Europe in winter) – equipment choice hasn’t been easy. Everything is inevitably a compromise between quality and robustness. Travelling unsupported by bicycle, weight and bulk are also important factors. And, because we will often have no access to mains electricity, sometimes for extended periods, low power consumption is crucial.

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