David George Haskell is a writer and biologist. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken, is an Editor’s Choice at the New York Times and explores the story of sound on Earth. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, he illuminates and celebrates the emergence, diversification, and loss of the sounds of our world, including human music and language.
At the Guardian Haskell tagged ten books that "helped me to hear better and to understand the stories behind the sounds I was hearing" in nature. One title on the list:
What the Robin Knows by Jon YoungRead about the other entries on the list at the Guardian.
Careful listening to the sounds of birds not only cues us into the identity of the songsters, their sounds can also attune us to the landscape. The nuances of the calls and songs of everyday birds can reveal the nature and location of animals such as foxes and owls, and also connect us to seasonal rhythms and year-to-year changes. Young is an evangelist for “sit spots”, locations that we return to again and again to open our senses to the world, a practice that I have found essential to my own education in listening. Repeated attention to one place helps us to belong to it, rather than existing as outside observers.
--Marshal Zeringue
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