Nothing Silent

Coragyps atratus #19 is part of a series of portraits documenting the black vulture colony in Pleasantville, New York. Taken over the course of two winters, each portrait is of an individual bird. This project grows out of a desire to understand each of these birds as unique, more than just a specimen of the species.

Coragyps atratus #19

Coragyps atratus #15 is part of a series of portraits documenting the black vulture colony in Pleasantville, New York. Taken over the course of two winters, each portrait is of an individual bird. This project grows out of a desire to understand each of these birds as unique, more than just a specimen of the species.

Coragyps atratus #15

Mianus River Gorge, Bedford NY
April 1, 2022
Helios 44-2 KMZ, Canon EOS R5

Old Growth

666...

Ice crystals melting against a window pane
Jan 15 2022

Melting Ice

Good Things We’ve Had

Symplocarpus foetidus #2
Skunk cabbage leaf  bundle in water

Zofnass Family Preserve, Pound Ridge, NY
March 12, 2021
Nikon NIKKOR✱ED 180mm f/2.8 AI-s, Panasonic LUMIX GH5

Symplocarpus foetidus #2

Coragyps atratus #11 is part of a series of portraits documenting the black vulture colony in Pleasantville, New York. Taken over the course of two winters, each portrait is of an individual bird. This project grows out of a desire to understand each of these birds as unique, more than just a specimen of the species.

Coragyps atratus #11

Portraits of the black vulture colony in Pleasantville NY. Taken over the course of two winters, each portrait is of an individual bird. This project grows out of a desire to understand each of these birds as unique, more than just a specimen of a species.

Coragyps atratus - old

Jenny

Hic et Nunc

Protect the asset...

Typed

Late morning under Tensaw Bluff. The insect chorus ends amid cardinals, great crested flycatcher, northern parula, white-eyed vireo, tufted titmouse and prothonotary warbler. A distant pig frog grunts.

Selected from an overnight recording made on May 03 2022 in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta of Alabama.

Stereo audio, still image of a northern parula
David Michael

Under Tensaw Bluff III

Versum

Halloween

Lifespan

Symplocarpus foetidus #11

Symplocarpus foetidus (skunk cabbage) grows in wetland soils of eastern North America. Its flowers emit a foul fragrance that attracts its pollinators: flies. Over the last few years, I have been documenting the yearly emergence of these plants.

Symplocarpus foetidus

Late Saturday night after visiting points south, a young woman walks ahead of her group through the sand lanes between Atlantique and Robbins Rest. She is lost and found.

Recorded in Robbins Rest, Fire Island NY in August of 2021. 
LOM Uši Pros, Sound Devices MixPre-3 II, baffled stereo array.

I Hear You

Microphones are not ears. Loudspeakers are not birds. A listening room is not nature.

The morning after a spring thunderstorm, migrating songbirds congregate in the Danielson amphitheater.

Recorded by David Michael on May 08, 2013 in La Farge, Wisconsin.

Originally released in 2016 on "43​.​591411, -90​.​653675".
Edited for size.

Jesuit of Orchards

Field Recordings

The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is the most widespread species of swallow in the world.

Hirundo rustica

A collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition.

The Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula) is a small icterid blackbird common in eastern North America as a migratory breeding bird.

Icterus galbula

Menagerie

Vestry

Creating all these spaces and systems requires enormous quantities of materials.

N190FT

BUILT

A juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, Nyctanassa violacea, perches on a stump near Alligator Lake in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Photographed on June 17, 2021 by David Michael.

Game of Thrones

Growing up in Alabama I never knew about the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. More than forty years passed before my childhood friend made me aware of its existence.

Saw palmetto, Serenoa repens, is ubiquitous in the forests of the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Photographed on May 04, 2022 by David Michael.

Saw Palmetto

The Mobile-Tensaw River Delta

Little blue heron, Egretta caerulea
June 17, 2021

Bird-voiced tree frog, Dryophytes avivoca
June 16, 2021

The Song of the Swamp

DEPRECATED

Don’t be afraid of them. They are only the quintessence of vegetable juices, and everything in nature feeds upon them ravenously.
    -Charles Valentine Riley, 1885

Recorded by David Michael on May 26, 2021 during the emergence of the Brood X periodical cicadas in the Patapsco Valley of Maryland.

Magicicadas with Songbird

Documents of the 2021 emergence of the Great Eastern Brood, the largest brood of 17-year periodical cicadas.

When you last heard it you were just settling down. The time before that you were a teenager. Before that it was the year you were born. The next time you hear it you might be a grandfather.
    -David Rothenberg, Bug Music

Recorded by David Michael on May 26, 2021 during the emergence of the Brood X periodical cicadas in the Patapsco Valley of Maryland.

Magicicadas with Photographer

Brood X

Young green frogs, Lithobates clamitans
Filmed August 9, 2020
4096 x 2160 DCI H.264

We Are Stones

Situations

Peals of thunder from a passing storm. A recordist and guide. A capybara sounds the alarm call.

Recorded on April 12, 2023 using a baffled, spaced pair of LOM Uši Pro microphones fed into a Zoom F3 recorder. Site assistance provided by Jair Mariche.

Capybara

For years after returning from the Mamori Sound Project in the Brazilian Amazon I dreamt of the rainforest. I mean this quite literally. It is of course a cliché to say the experience changed my life, but there it is.

14 years later I made it back to the South American jungles, this time with children. A trip to the Tambopata National Reserve in Perú was added as an opportune addendum to a visit with family in Lima.

The Peruvian rainforest on the Tambopata River is different than the area surrounding Mamori Lake in Brazil. Tambopata is famous for its clay licks that attract enormous flocks of various parrot species. It seems salt is in short supply so far inland.

Collpa Colorado (Colorado Clay Lick) is just up river from the Tambopata Research Center. Though the shifting river has opened up new more popular sites further to the south, Collpa Colorado still puts on an amazing show.

davidmichael

davidmichael

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