Dawn in the rainforest - Sounds of Costa Rica

The experience of being present and immersed in a rainforest can be a little overwhelming. The soundscape is busy at all times of day and night. The insect chorus is harsh and loud, unsettling at times. Frogs, birds, mammals and others contribute to the ambience too. Some of their calls can be melodious while others are more on the grating side. The heat, the humidity, the smell of decaying vegetation and other such pleasures round out the picture.

The soundscape isn't a free-for-all though. Each creature has its own little allotted segment in the frequency or time domain. The apparent chaos is actually random only when looked at (or listened to) for very short durations. As soon as you zoom out by listening intently for anything longer than half an hour, patterns start to emerge. Listen for longer and you will notice many polyrhythms and cycles of ebbs and flows.

The beauty of this soundscape I recorded in the rainforests of Costa Rica lies in the sheer amount of little detail. I placed the microphones on the side of a hill so hearing distance is quite good. The sounds that reach the microphone come from a variety of distances and several biomes. Each layer comes with its own amount of obstruction from trees and geographical features.

It's around 6 am, just as dawn light starts to penetrate to the forest floor. The insects are vocal but not annoyingly so. Birds start calling here and there, building momentum with every chirp, tweet or whatever bleating/cackling noise Macaws make. There are Motmots everywhere, uttering their own name every few seconds in low tones.

One of the most interesting birds in this location is the Red-capped manakin. The males gather in a suitable part of the jungle and start displaying to attract females. Their displays include a funky dance and the whistling calls you can hear peppered through the recording. Just before the end you can also hear something resembling a high-voltage current discharge many times in a row. This is another one of the manakin's calls.

Bonus points if you can hear the Motmot fly very close to the mics and call a few times. I usually edit out such bits because they break immersion to some extent, but this one seemed too amusing to not include.

Recorded with Zoom F6 and DPA 6060 microphones in Corcovado NP, Costa Rica. Enjoying the videos I upload on here? Feel free to support me by:
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