Listen up, nature lovers – Winnipeg Free Press

A trio of Manitoba natives in feathers, fur and parkas are featured in a new film. The nature of things series premieres this week on CBC.

Over three episodes, The secret world of sound explores nature through animal communication and auditory adaptations. It's a new way of making nature documentaries, which often prioritize wildlife visuals, explains writer and executive producer Dugald Maudsley.

“Sound plays second fiddle,” he says by phone from Toronto. “So the idea was to shift the paradigm … and so we realized there's a whole world out there that we haven't paid much attention to.”

Narrated by The nature of things host Anthony Morgan, the series examines the role of sound in the lives and survival of species as diverse as singing fish, buzzing bees and roaring lions.

Filming took place over two years in a variety of habitats, including winter forests and fields near Selkirk, where great gray owls blindly hunt meadow voles under the snow.

This local predator-prey relationship is shown in the first episode of the show Hunters and huntersworking this thursday.

“How does this owl use sound to catch its prey?” Maudsley says the film crew was interested in Manitoba's official bird. “We have this great audio story … and we also have this great science story, which is: What have scientists learned about how owls do this?”

This includes James Duncan (and his park).

The retired biologist has been studying owls at Intercol for 40 years. His recent research on winter hunting behavior is the basis of a television segment.

“Great grays reach their greatest weight and best body condition in January and February,” says Duncan. “It's a time when a lot of animals are struggling to survive, and here you have this animal actually growing.”

Although owls have exceptional eyesight, they have the same hearing ability as humans. This must be a disadvantage this winter, when meadow voles—the great gray's preferred prey—rely on tunnels under the snow to travel unseen.

Working with another avian biologist, Duncan was able to decipher the owl's seasonal hunting behavior using an acoustic camera.

“The camera converts sound energy into a visual image,” he says. “So it was a way to see and actually measure some of the sounds and the effect of the snow on the sounds.”

The snow filters through and creates an “acoustic mirage” that breaks the sound of the mice running around and distorts the exact location of the small rodents. To compensate, the owls swoop down over the snowdrift and triangulate their throats before diving in for the kill.

“They have to do this to overcome the fracture,” says Duncan. “It's really cool.”

Duncan, his American partner Christopher Clark and their experience are shown behind the scenes at the end of Thursday's episode. Participating in the Sub-Zero shoot was a rewarding experience.

“It was a nice culmination of decades of research to solve this itchy problem in the back of my brain,” says Duncan, whose findings have raised more questions about the role of facial feathers in great gray owl hearing.

While filming in Manitoba this past winter, Maudsley's crew dealt with faulty equipment due to the bitterly cold temperatures. This was an additional hurdle for a technically challenging project.

In most nature documentaries, sound is added during editing and taken from recording libraries.

“We decided to shoot a lot of sound in the field and then combine it with the images, which is very difficult,” says Maudsley. “We also realized that there are many sounds that we cannot hear.

“Using amazing equipment, we recorded these sounds and entered that world,” he adds. “It's a kind of auditory experience that you don't normally get.”

The The secret world of sound day of premieres The nature of things Thursdays at 9pm on CBC TV and CBC Gem.

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