‘The river’s always talking’

‘It’s got to be the arrival of the turtle dove —the sound of the summer. I partly grew up in Africa and the sound of the doves was part of our everyday immersion into that soundscape.-ing not only takes me back to those sounds and smells of Africa, but the thrill that it really might be the beginning of summer here in England’‘Out fishing, I listen. The river’s always talking: from weir lip, rapids, glides. Most days, a single cry will lift the eye, to catch the kingfisher’s () blue hurtle. One Tamar morning, however, that sharp piping resounded at the surface: two otters, sisters, playing the water, singing themselves, stopping the heart’‘I’d never seen a kingfisher until we moved to our home in the Norfolk countryside—and, now, whenever I hear its high whistling call from the murmuring brook that runs through our village, I associate the sound with the halcyon days of summer and the magical flash of those sapphire wings’‘The cry of foxhounds as they pick up the scent on wet grassland at 3.30pm on the first Saturday in December’‘I chose the evening song of the blackbird on the chimney tops as one of my. I’ve even written a poem about him. That plaintive song at the end of the day always strikes me as a celebration of a life well lived and a hymn of thanks’‘My favourite sound of the countryside has to be the song of the skylark. It represents all that is great about being outdoors with Nature: joy, freedom and escape. It’s a sound I’ve loved from childhood, when I’d hear it when roaming the fields near my home’