Audio angle, York, 6 May

The May bank holiday was scented by blossom. Technology can’t deliver that, but I did capture some sounds. Beginning with a buzzing bee by our back door, ending up on Strensall Common.

Spring has been a long time coming. Here in the UK we’re particularly surprised when a bank holiday weekend is fine and sunshine-filled, as this one was.

At home:
The birds and bees were doing their springtime thing. Bees flying in through our open kitchen door, a blackbird singing for spring, from the garden wall:


(if you’re unable to see the embedded player … try this link instead)

Out and about:
Three sounds – (1) The riverside path by York’s Museum Gardens, a ?barrel organ? playing, with background birdsong (2) My footsteps, fleeing a busy city centre, along the alleyway at the bottom of Bootham Terrace, with background birdsong (3) Walking over pine cones on Strensall Common, later that afternoon.


(if you’re unable to see the embedded player … try this link instead)

All recorded on an old Sony Ericsson ‘dumbphone’. Because I could. And because sometimes words and pictures can’t properly capture the sense of place, with its background birdsong.

Tag(s): sounds, audio, nature

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4 comments

  1. lovely !!!

  2. Your ‘Boots are made for walking’,by the sound of your recording.Wonder if you have any like mine were during my youth,big boots fitted with steel”Segs” on the cast iron “Last” on our
    concrete back kitchen floor.Very apt name,for
    boots that had to last for the”Duration”of war.

    Loved the pics’of Strensall common,reminded me of my Apprentice early days at Cooke Troughton and Simms (1946 to 1951),where at the right time of year,we were sent out to the common to pick & bottle, cross backed spiders,from the gorse bushes,and back at CTS.spin their webs onto thin wire forks bent 6”x4”,and coated with shellac,no fun for the spiders!
    Might seem a bit ‘Non-P C’ these days,but the web was attached to Microscope,Theodolite,and
    Telescope Scientific instrument eye pieces,as perfect straight black lines for measurements.
    I believe probably to this day these devices are in museums etc with their cargo of Strensall common “Spider Web”.!

  3. YorkStories

    Hi Stephen, I do remember segs – they seemed to be a man’s thing though – my own shoes were and are segless. In the recording I was walking extra fast, fleeing the crowded city, keen to escape & look at some trees.

    Great info on Cooke, Troughton & Simms – I am though worried about the welfare of the spiders, and also wondering who first thought about going & grabbing spiders off the common – intriguing!

    And thank you Drake – glad you liked it

  4. Beverley Foster

    Lovely sounds. I live in a residential street near the river and railway station but can very often hear nothing but the birds and the odd hoot of a tourist cruise boat or the comforting rumble of a train. It’s as though people don’t go outside their houses, or maybe they are outside but quietly listening to the sounds of York too.

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