A Lively Spring Afternoon in the Montado
Recorded in the Spring of 2022, this soundscape has all the indicators of a warm day: pollinators, a variety of crickets, occasional frogs and a rich multi-layered display of bird song.
It’s one of the quietest places I know, allowing an equally quiet observer to listen to all the layers and make up a sonorous composition of this place weaving it in one’s imagination.
These are the most prevalent bird species one can hear in this recording:
Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix), Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus), Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupidae), Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra), Little Owl (Athene noctua).
The Montado is an unique system, existing only in the Iberian Peninsula although slightly different from the Dehesa, in Spain. As far as we know, human intervention has started during the neolithic period, favouring certain trees for their high yielding fruits that feed the animals, and others for their cork.
Despite such intricate connection and millennial relationship, the Montado is in decline; this system is incredibly fragile and faces a number of grave threats today, from diseases that affect trees and wild rabbits to overgrazing, to privatization of enormous areas of land for mono-crop exploitation, leaving the soil impoverished and triggering the increase of chemical use, which will then infiltrate the underground.
Thus, it is imperative and urgent to take good care of this emblematic land.