A LIFE IN SOUND
This series aims to take listeners on an epic and intimate journey through the natural world, all through the medium of sound and at the same time we want to enable a rare glimpse into the life of a man who recorded everything you’re about to hear, one sound at a time.
Martyn Stewart has spent his lifetime on a mission: to record the natural sounds of our planet. It’s a story that will take us from a council estate in Birmingham England and ultimately take him to every corner of the planet. From Belize to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, from Denali to the Galapagos, to some of the most inhospitable locations geographically and politically. He will be attacked by lions and crocodiles, arrested in Japan for filming the annual dolphin slaughter and then find himself in long periods of isolation, in remote corners of the world waiting for 30 seconds of a that perfect sound. This is ultimately a love story – dedicated to our natural world and to the people who spend their lives aiming to give it a voice.
A LIFE IN SOUND
Wild Costa Rica
In this epsiode, Martyn Stewart, transplants his life from the verdant landscapes of Washington State to the lush tropics of Playa Pelada in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. We'll be entranced by the dawn chorus, where howler monkeys and the symphony of birdsong announce the break of each day. We'll then venture deep into the untamed heart of the Osa Peninsula and experience it's raw and untamed beauty. From the songs of the melodious blackbird through to the haunting calls of the invasive cane toad and the gentle patter of rain on the lush foliage, listeners will experience the exhilarating challenge of capturing the rich tapestry of aural biodiversity. Martyn's narrative offers a masterclass in the art of nature audio recording, where every sound, from a chirping bird to a distant thunderclap, contributes to the majestic symphony of the rainforest.
As we wrap up our journey, we delve into the delicate balance between wildlife conservation and tourism. We confront the poignant realities of turtle conservation and the challenges of preserving habitats in Costa Rica.
This episode invites you to surrender to the natural concert that surrounds us, urging you to immerse yourself fully in the wonder of it all.
www.thelisteningplanet.com
This is Martyn Stewart, with a life in sound from the Listening Planet.
Amanda :So today we're going to travel to Costa Rica. It's one of my favourite places on Earth and somewhere that you also decided to make home, Martin. So are we ready Now? You originally moved from Washington.
Martyn:State. What year was it? We decided to go and look at land in 2017 and 2018. We bought land, had houses and my dream studio built down there and we actually left in January 2019 and drove from Seattle to Miami, dumped the car off Roo, got on the plane with our little white Labrador and I had to go the long way via Nicaragua with Bucket because he was so big he he was like a horse.
Amanda :Yeah, and where did you land? Where did you end up?
Martyn:I ended up in Playa Palada, which is the next little village down from Nosara in Guanacaste. It's just, you know, they call it a blue zone.
Amanda :Tell me what a blue zone is.
Martyn:A blue zone is supposed to be the healthiest environment you could wish to be in, and there's longevity in there.
Amanda :I could do with some blue zones now, I think so, Nosara, so we I've had the privilege of coming to stay with you and with my family and you're right next to Nosara in the Nicoya Peninsula, and I can't even begin to explain how pristine the beaches are, the lush tropical forests, but I've never, ever, heard a dawn chorus like the one that woke me up in the morning. It's actually Martyn. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to start there. Tell me, I mean, it actually blew, blew my mind. Tell me what you hear every morning when you wake up. Tell me the characters.
Martyn:Tell me what the setting is when I first heard the dawn chorus before you'd come down, it was like being mugged with a gang of monkeys it was. It was crazy. It's because the the night and the day is probably the same. You get 12 hours day, 12 hours night. There's no debating about it, it's just there. And 6 o'clock at night the cicadas start calling and you look at your clock and you think, okay, it's night, it's coming down, sun's gone, and then the dawn the monkeys fill the trees howler monkeys and they wake everybody up. The only thing they haven't got is a bunch of saucepans banging wooden spoons.
Amanda :But they're guttural raw, so when it blends in in a soundscape you can't hear how loud the volume of these creatures is just unbelievable, unbelievable well, low frequency sounds travel along further as well, which makes it more interesting.
Martyn:You got high frequency birds singing in the canopies and the sounds drop out over a period over a distance, but the howler monkeys you can hear them for miles throughout. Yeah, and there's some. There's some beautiful, beautiful places just around where you were staying with us, um the bocca itself, which is the river, and this reserve which is at the side of it, of um playa palada. I loved it there. It was just absolutely you were in a dream, so the soundscapes were lush.
Martyn:I remember when I finally got there with Pocket, we had no furniture in the house from Seattle and I said to Roo, I'm going to go and explore, take my recorder and my mic and my cables, headphones and just go down the road. They're all dirt tracks, there's nothing sealed or anything. And I took my little trusty stool so I could sit my arse on it in the morning and, um, I had no shoes on and my legs were getting bitten by all these fire ants and I was itching all over, but I tried to stay quiet and still, and it was almost like I'd been shot and woken up in heaven for me, yeah, to be able to go out in the morning without the intrusion of man-made sounds is heaven to me, and it's almost like you're taken back to your youth, you know, when you've got less people on the planet, making a racket.
Martyn:And I came back absolutely ecstatic and said to Roo, this is where we, we needed to be. This is just everything. I don't care. What you do in life, I don't care, I've got my jungle and rainforest, you know. So I can just record.
Amanda :Had you just been on a trip and then decided after the trip that you were going to abandon Washington and move to?
Martyn:My studio in Redmond Washington. I'd go from the kitchen, go through the living room into my studio and Ru would be watching these House Hunter International programs and she'd be on the couch and stuff and I'd come through with my cup of tea or whatever. And I saw this program on Costa Rica where they're given three or four houses to choose from, or they they get a choice of land and they build the house and they show you over time they're moving from one place to the next. And I just said to her that, um, I stopped. I sat on the on the uh corner of the chair, said wow, look at that, you fancy doing that. And within within an hour and a half she was looking for flights to go down to North Sarai.
Martyn:Serious, so we went down, we had a look, we fell in love with the idea. I said, let's, let's just get out of washington state, because washington state's beautiful but it's bloody freezing.
Amanda :And it was just her dream do you know how many people think that? People think it martyn, all the time, but they don't like. It's very rare that you get to act upon it. I'd like you to introduce us to some of the characters that we're gonna meet down there. So we talked about the howler monkey, which is definitely one of my favourite, but you'd also hear these incredible tropical birds Describe the setting. Actually, for people who haven't been there, we're in tropical rainforest.
Martyn:There's a dry season and there's a wet season, and when you encounter the dry season, you don't need product for your hair. Your hair stands up like Leo Sayo or Art Garfunkel and it's dry. There's dust everywhere, there's a cloud everywhere. It gets in your face and you think, wow, this is unbelievable. And then the end of April, the rains come. It's beautiful. Humidity is unbelievable.
Martyn:The sounds like you say it's like this full on orchestra. You say it's like this full-on orchestra. And of course, the first thing I want to do is go out and identify everything that's calling. So I was listening to mannequins and all the different doves that were around. There were toucans, there were quetzals, there was there's a whole cacophony of sound coming from all these different instrumentalists beautiful, these vocalists, um. So I found a place. There was a really brilliant guy who's a good friend of mine. He's a tico down there. He was a partner of the guy who built a house in the studio and, um, his name is manta and he took me into a special place of his because we, we were both connected through nature and he took me through this drive, through the river on the 4x4. We, we went through with aldous and you and dan remember yeah, we did and I discovered birds that weren't supposed to be there through recordings.
Martyn:There was the Montezuma Oropendula.
Amanda :So I love the Montezuma Oropendula, and we even used it on biophonica.
Martyn:The first time I recorded the Oropendula, I think, was in Belize. The noise that they bring out their cyrots is just phenomenal and it become my favorite sound. So I was in this finca with Manta, who took us through and I could see these nests, and I said to Manta those are Oropendulas? And he said yes, they are. He said what they were in Spanish, and then the noise from the forest was this call of these old pendulums. So I was in awe, you know. You just think, wow, this is in my back garden, everything here is in my back garden. Now all I got to do is just throw a bottle of water in the truck, put my microphone on my my seat and go off and record these things, whereas, whereas before, when you're in Seattle, you've got to go miles to go and try and find somewhere that's quiet. This was my heaven.
Amanda :Tell me about the. I also really like the sound of the mannequins.
Martyn:The mannequins are cool. There's a mnemonic, which is termed for a bird phrase that people use when are you? Where are you? And when you get this mnemonic in your head, you can't get rid of it. It's like we were talking the other night with blinky bill, with the united nations launch, and he asked me the name of this bird that he always hears in nairobi. Remember, and I found I found it through a mnemonic because of the way he was describing it I am the red-eyed dog.
Amanda :I am the red-eyed dog, I am the red-eyed dog I said I know what it is.
Martyn:it's so in nosara the mannequins all around where we were living had that where are you, where are you? And they drive you nuts. They drive you nuts. So I get these little mnemonics in my head and I identify bird sound from those. They're not the ones everyone uses, they're just the ones I use. I put these crazy terminologies to them all.
Amanda :And tell me about. So you put out an album with the listening planet which was called Costa Rica Dry Dangle and I think it was recorded in Finca, Austria is that right, finca Austria. Conacaste, province of Costa Rica. So tell me more about because it's incredible countryside tropical rainforests. Tell me about some of the soundscapes that we'd hear in that recording.
Martyn:Well, like I say, the dry season is a different sound signature to the wet season, and when it rains you've got the sounds of rain dripping off, glossy leaves, and you have these beautiful Quantacosti trees and all different species of trees, which all give certain sound signatures, and it's all part of this sound. You know that you listen to the cracking and the breaking and the dropping of leaves and then the first birds that start coming in. There's this melodious blackbird, which is also one of the first birds that start coming in. There's this melodious blackbird which is also one of the first ones. I think I recorded up in Belize, so I knew that and I knew. There's a bird called the clay-coloured robin, which I think they've changed the name now to the clay-coloured thrush and I think it's adopted as the bird of Costa Rica. It's their national bird. They have a mnemonic too, which is and it's that squeal and you think, oh my God, you're here, then that with the mannequins and the doves, and then the toucans and the parrots and the whole lot of them, you know.
Amanda :Tell me how does a toucan sound. How does a toucan sound, Martin?
Martyn:And then there are tinnimus as well, which are these like chicken-type birds which you hear, you don't see a lot of birds. You don't see a lot of birds, you don't see a lot of critters. And then, of course, you've got the hollow monkeys, and they're everywhere always in the backdrop. They're always in the backdrop um. It's just incredible, as you can hear now.
Amanda :So what's the so if I jump from the Guanacos Bottoms, which is literally where you lived, and even the recording in Fincastre is about 20 minutes drive, I think, from here, I want to jump over to probably the most remote destination in Costa Rica, which is the Osa Peninsula, and it's that part that juts out into the sea at the southern end of Costa Rica's Pacific coast, and it's known to be an ecological gem, an incredible biodiversity. I found a stat that said it represents 2.5% of the world's biodiversity and it only is in 0.001% of the Earth's surface, and here we can hear everything from jaguars to scarlet macaws, poison dart frogs. So let's skip across to Oast Peninsula, and I know that you did a recording that you released, called Crossroads of Dreams. Tell me about the soundscape of the Osa Peninsula.
Martyn:The Osa Peninsula is a real special place and the first time we went down there to record, we hired this old Suzuki Jeep thing and we got it from San Jose and we drove down and the beauty of the place was there's no electricity, so it's all eco places. You know, we stayed at an eco lodge but you had to park like two miles away and then the only way you could get to the eco lodge was along the beach. So they bring a cart and a donkey and you put all your luggage on it and they pull it across the sands. We went for a night walk first of all when we got there with a tracker that told us that the jaguar's present.
Amanda :Oh.
Martyn:So we didn't hear a jaguar. I didn't hear a jaguar any time that I was there, but you that kind of feeling that you knew it was in, in the vicinity yeah so I put an audio box out for a week so it was recording every half an hour.
Martyn:So just to give me an idea what was what was calling, what was singing. It's always a nice bass then. So if, if the audio box tells me that this is a practically pristine environment to recording, then there's minimal editing that I need to do. It's kind of set on a slopey area. It's very, very hard to navigate through the Osset Peninsula at the south end, but when you get to a point where you can record, you've got water rolling down the hills, you've got brooks and streams, you've got rain, you've got thunder. Some of the thunder cracks are just.
Martyn:They frighten the shit out of you you know we get requests for thunder and rain, so people can sleep too, and I kind of understand that. And yet a lot of people think, my God, it's frightening.
Amanda :It makes people really safe.
Martyn:My dog can't sleep when there's a thunderstorm. He's on my bed, you know straight away. But again the soundscapes are just unbelievable. So it's again. You go to Costa Rica and you go to all these places. The Osa Peninsula is a special place and did you record in Corcovado National. Park yes, corcovado National Park, and there's a. There's a research place, which I managed to get up to as well, where you even have the sounds of crocodiles in the mornings.
Amanda :Did you record crocodiles? Yeah, I got crocodiles. And you didn't have any ridiculous escapes of crocodiles.
Martyn:No, not there. You kind of know they're there again. So you don't go wandering in the bush in the night you absolutely don't, unless you've got a torch.
Amanda :But again, the monkeys are there and then there's and you've also got the capuchins there as well, haven't you the?
Martyn:capuchins. Are there the spider monkeys? You've got sloths, which?
Amanda :you were telling me over the day, don't really make a sound. Someone asked me.
Martyn:I got a sound of a sloth. Because they've seen a sloth. They think everything vocalises. It probably does. But it spends a week up a tree and then only comes down the tree for a crap and then it goes back up again, or should I say it comes down to defecate, to keep it correct.
Amanda :It comes down to defecate. What are some of the other? So how long did you stay down in the Ars Benita level?
Martyn:We stayed down after a week. We did a couple of night walks. The poison dart frogs are amazing. Then you know, there's an introduced species which seems to get everywhere the um the cane toad. The cane toad was present in um finca, austria as well, through the night scapes and it's they're quite a definite. I love the sound of the cane toad. I think it's beautiful. It's got that wah. I can't do animal sounds, but it has a distinctive call about it and they're kind of great.
Amanda :Tell me what the vegetation feels like. We talk a lot about the sounds, but tell me what the what am I physically surrounded by?
Martyn:What am I physically surrounded by? You're with deciduous and non-deciduous plants. You get a lot of tropical plants. It's almost like going down to the flower shop and seeing aglomeras and you're seeing spadophiliums. You're seeing guanacustid trees, pine trees, you're seeing all different types of ferns. There are ferns like licorice ferns. There are ferns like resurrection ferns. The resurrection ferns are incredible. They're the ones where in the dry season, everything looks like it's dead, but when the rains come, suddenly they're rejuvenated and they're just beautiful and proud and green and lush. And the sounds of rain bouncing off all these different leaves and different types of plants are unique, completely unique. You can't replicate that in a northern hemisphere. You can't replicate that in a northern hemisphere. You can't do it. You know, if you blindfolded, you were blindfolded and you were dropped off. And besides all the tropical birds and stuff, if you were just to listen to rain itself, you would know you were in a type of rainforest like that tropical rainforest.
Amanda :One of the things that I liked a lot about when I was there as well is that it feels as though and tell me if this is incorrect it feels as though it's very geared towards sustainability. Conservation tourism is far more based on ecotourism, and I remember when my daughter so when India was over with Rui recently she was really fascinated with the turtle conservation that I believe is on the beach near to where you used to live.
Martyn:Do you ever go and see?
Amanda :the turtles.
Martyn:I volunteered to help stop the poaching that was going on there. So you go out and you patrol the beach four o'clock in the morning to stop the locals coming in and digging up the eggs and selling them. They sell them for aclock in the morning to stop the locals coming in and digging up the eggs and selling them. They sell them for a dollar in the bars and they consider them as an apodysia, which is just an absolute bunch of poppycock.
Martyn:But the Ridley's turtles and when you see the Ridley's turtles coming, I've recorded the turtles, I've recorded their grunts and their breathlessness. You know it takes them maybe an hour and a half, two hours to dig a hole and lay their eggs, then cover all their eggs up and go back out to sea. But when you see the hatchlings come out normally they're about 50 odd days after the laying of the eggs and you see all these little turtles trying to race back to the ocean and you can't help them, you can't pick them up and go and throw them into the sea because they need to have that imprint in their minds so that when they come back 22 years later to lay their own eggs they know exactly where they're coming back to, but it's, it's phenomenal. I mean, you see that if, if you don't show emotion from something quite as spectacular as that, there must be something wrong with it.
Amanda :it's beautiful tell me about um some of the other conservation work that's happening down in costa rica. Anything else that?
Martyn:well, the the monkeys are always in trouble because the power lines are being put up without sheaves on the electricity lines, so they're frequently being electrocuted. So there's a couple of rehab places that rehab the monkeys after that. But like everything else, costa Rica is beautiful and the ecosystem is pretty strong. But even in six years I go back there, I wouldn't recognize it because it's like suddenly this city starting to explode. Everybody wants to be there because it's beautiful, because it's paradise, and a lot of people go to Nosara to surf, so it's a kind of surfing paradise. It's the, it's the central part of central america that every surfer wants to go and throw their board into the ocean and surf on it. But it's um, the land that we bought and put our houses on. Now, rude, tells me, you'd never recognize the street, which is a great shame.
Amanda :It's so hard, isn't it, that you want to go somewhere to escape, and then everybody else also wants to escape Everyone's following you. Everyone's following and then you end up not being in that same pristine environment and even going to the Osa Peninsula it's so protected but again, more and more people are going to somewhere that's always been, even until recently, quite inaccessible for lots of people.
Martyn:If you look at nosara itself and go into old nosara, there's two different worlds. You see poverty and you see, you know, the opulence of places like nosara and these up market restaurants. Locals can't afford to go and eat in those at all. But we used to go to the locals' restaurants out in Nosara by the airport and have rice and beans because it just made you feel kind of humble. But whereas a lot of the tourists that go to Nosara never go as far as the ocean, they won't go into the rainforest, which is a good thing to me because it keeps them out, you know.
Amanda :What are some of your favourite places in Costa Rica? Like if I was going to go there again.
Martyn:Arenal is beautiful. Where the volcano is, you know you've got a different when you border on Nicaragua. It's kind of wild up there still, so there's there's a lot of places where you can, where I can drop a mic in and record for a long time. There's a national park which is on the border which I forget the name of of nicaragua, costa rica. It's just above tamarindo um, and there's healthy population of jaguars up there, which is good. My favourite place of all is the Osa Peninsula.
Amanda :I imagine you must have met some amazing people in Costa Rica, because it does attract a lot of people who are committed to conservation, and so I imagine that there's just more of a group of people who are committed to conservation, and so I imagine that there's just more of a group of people who are committed to protecting the natural world, or maybe that's my kind of idealistic sensibility.
Martyn:And a good friend of the Listening Planet, santiago Roberts, is doing some great work down there trying to involve people in acoustic biology and he's showing them places through sound rather than visual the Sabu rehabilitation place for animals. They do some great work and they need all the help they can get with fundraising. They do great stuff.
Amanda :What do Sabu? What's Sabu community?
Martyn:For monkey rehabilitation.
Amanda :Oh, this is monkey rehabilitation, yeah.
Martyn:You know they rehabilitate and relocate all the monkeys that are being caught on power lines and their trees are being cut down. So one of the biggest enemies down there are the realtors, because they sell everything. You know they get a bit of land and you're going to sell it and everyone's selling land. Even now in my email program I get you know property for sale and stuff at great prices. Come down to your beautiful paradise in Costa Rica. It's a universal problem. It's not just Costa Rica, it's everywhere. Did you record?
Amanda :anything, any of the marine life or any of the oceans.
Martyn:Yeah, I dropped a microphone into the ocean, into the river. I did some stuff in the Bocca Nosara, the river at the bottom of Playa Pallada, and recorded crocodiles under the water.
Amanda :It's just another world, it just fantastic, you know I remember when you had us go or go canoeing, what river were we on?
Martyn:that was the book and you had your legs.
Amanda :You had your legs dangling in the booker and we're going along in the canoe and then suddenly we see crocodiles. I've never been so scared. Oh my goodness, the fact that I'm alive.
Martyn:Still, I never think about it, you know. I just think all the places I've been in the world. If I start thinking about the things that's going to eat you, I'd never go anywhere. So what's a couple of feet, you know, dangling in the water.
Amanda :So if you could go back to Costa Rica and you're only allowed to go to one place, I'm assuming it's the Osa Peninsula but what haven't you recorded there that you'd love to go back and record?
Martyn:Oh, there's a hell of a lot of stuff I haven't recorded there. I mean to think that you've recorded the whole of Costa Rica would be arrogant. Tortellas National Park on the Atlantic side, which is just spectacular up there I've only ever touched that once with Roo there's so many different things. I mean there's so many different species of parrots, there's so many different mannequins, there's so many different brushes and warblers, and when you see some of the birds that you encounter in North America, they have a different kind of call signature to them, which is interesting. So I'd like to have the whole vocabulary, basically, of all the passerines that sing away and just put them to that collection. But soundscapes of Costa Rica, wherever you are, as long as you're not in urban areas, is just beautiful. I'd like to add to all that still.
Amanda :Thank you, Martin.
Martyn:You've just experienced another journey on the Listening Planet podcast. Dive deeper into the world of natural sounds by connecting with us online. Visit our website or follow us on social media. Let the symphony of nature surround you wherever you go. Happy listening.
