Listen up, nature lovers Series filmed near Selkirk explores role sound plays in wildlife By: Eva Wasney Posted: 6:00 AM CST Monday, Feb. 12, 2024

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This article was published 12/02/2024 (657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A trio of feathered, furry and parka-clad Manitoba residents are featured in a new Nature of Things series premièring on CBC this week.

Over three episodes, Secret World of Sound explores nature through the lens of animal communication and auditory adaptations. It’s a novel approach to nature documentary making, which often puts wildlife visuals at the forefront, explains writer and executive producer Dugald Maudsley.

“Sound tends to play second fiddle,” he says over the phone from Toronto. “So, the idea was to switch the paradigm … and by doing that we realized there was a whole world out there that we hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to.”

Narrated by Nature of Things host Anthony Morgan, the series looks at the role sound plays in the lives and survival of different species — such as singing fish, buzzing bees and roaring lions.

Filming took place over two years in a variety of habitats, including the wintertime forests and fields near Selkirk, where great grey owls blindly hunt for meadow voles scampering beneath the snow.

This local predator-prey relationship is featured in the first episode of the show, titled Hunters and Hunted, running this Thursday.

“How is this owl using sound to be able to capture its prey?” Maudsley says of the film crew’s interest in Manitoba’s official bird. “We’ve got this great sound story … plus we have this great science story, which is: what have scientists figured out about how the owl does this?”

That’s where James Duncan (and his parka) comes in.

The retired biologist has been studying owls in the Interlake for 40 years. His recent research into winter hunting behaviour is the basis for the television segment.

“Great greys reach their largest weight and best body condition in January and February,” Duncan says. “This is the time when so many animals are struggling to survive and here you have this animal that’s actually getting bigger.”

While owls have exceptional eyesight, their hearing has about the same range as humans. This should be a disadvantage during the winter, when meadow voles — the great grey’s prey of choice — rely on tunnels under the snow to travel out of sight.

Duncan was able to decode the owl’s seasonal hunting behaviour by teaming up with a fellow bird biologist and employing an acoustic camera.

“The camera converts sound energy into a visual image,” he says. “So it was a way of seeing and actually measuring some of these sounds and the influence of snow on the sounds.”

Snow filters and refracts the sound of voles scurrying around, creating an “acoustic mirage” that garbles the exact location of the small rodents. To compensate for this, owls swoop down and hover above the snowpack to triangulate their meal before diving in for the kill.

“They have to do that to overcome the refraction,” Duncan says. “It’s absolutely brilliant.”

Duncan, his American partner Christopher Clark and their experiment are featured in a behind-the-scenes segment at the end of Thursday’s episode. Being involved in the sub-zero filming was a rewarding experience.

“That was a nice culmination of decades-long research to solve a problem that’s been itching at the back of my brain,” Duncan says, adding that the findings have led to more questions about the role facial feathers play in great grey owl hearing.

While shooting in Manitoba last winter, Maudsley’s film crew dealt with malfunctioning equipment due to extreme cold temperatures. It was an additional hurdle for a technically challenging project.

With most nature documentaries, sound is added during editing and sourced from recording libraries.

“We decided to capture a lot of the sound in the field and then bring it together with the pictures, which is pretty challenging to do,” Maudsley says. “We also realized there were a lot of sounds out there we couldn’t actually hear.

“By using some cool equipment, we were able to record those sounds and get inside that world as well,” he adds. “It’s a kind of aural experience that you don’t normally get.”

The Secret World of Sound premières on The Nature of Things at 9 p.m. Thursday on CBC Television and on CBC Gem.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com X: @evawasney