This piece in today’s New York Times Magazine is about Bernie Krause, a former Hollywood sound man who researches a thing called biophony, the natural sonic environment. He chronicles and then analyzes the soundscapes of a wide variety of locations, mostly places like the Amazon that have an incredibly extensive array of critters and are without human civilization. Krause records the environments and tries to figure out the sonic relationships of the animals—how much of their existence is based on the sound they make and the sound they can hear?

Here is some food for thought:
Unfortunately, just as Krause and his scientific progeny have begun investigating the possibility that an ecosystem’s sounds are a key aspect of its health, they’re witnessing those sounds’ demise. In the decades Krause has been recording biophony — he has compiled a library of more than 3,500 hours of pristine natural sound, which he thinks is the world’s largest private collection — nearly a third of the ecosystems he has captured have become aurally “extinct” because of habitat loss or the presence of noise-making machines. In this country, animals are continually forced to compete for bandwidth not only with one another but also with snowmobiles, off-road vehicles, Jet Skis and other loud motorized “toys.”

It’s Sunday. Tonight as the sun starts to set, take a walk around the block and have a listen yourself. What creatures can you hear?