This dawn chorus was recorded at Holler Farm, located in the gorgeous Chenango Valley of New York State on the morning of Sunday May 23rd, 2010. The microphones were located on a ridge facing westward toward the dirt road that runs past the farm, that ultimately slopes off down into the valley. The recording location is at the edge of a field that is partially colonized by bushes, shrubs, and pioneer trees. This field is bounded on the left (North) by a stream which borders the adjacent woodland. The farm house is located a few hundred feet directly in front of the microphones, but is visually obscured by the vegetation.

Shortly before 5am, when only the slightest hint of light is visible in the sky, a woodcock and a catbird join the sound of the stream, a few crickets, and the distant peepers. Diffuse song emanates from the woodland and distant trees. Birds of the field make the rounds, perching on shrubs around the microphones. A distant rooster crows. A cow moos. Man also wakes with an occasional car and perhaps an airplane.

This beautiful land happens to sit on top of a vast field of natural gas called the Marcellus Shale. Oil and gas companies have been leasing land in the area for decades, but of the extraction of this gas has not been economically viable on the whole until very recently. With America's appetite for energy increasing unabated, the remaining available fossil fuels are being sought out with increased vigor and natural gas drilling is coming to the Chenango Valley in a very big way.

The oil and gas companies are heavily engaged in a decades long propaganda campaign that has effectively manipulated most of the land owners in the region into signing leases. Farmers are now excited about the prospect of cashing in on the leases and environmentalists are apoplectic about the impact to the region.

Please take some time to read about the plans for the Marcellus Shale of New York State and the techniques of hydraulic fracturing used in natural gas extraction.

un-naturalgas.org/resources_and_documents.htm

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marcellus-shale-natural-gas-drilling-radioactive-wastewater

What does seem to be fairly certain at this point is that when natural gas drilling begins in earnest in this valley, dawn choruses of this quality will be in short supply, crowded out by a cacophony of transport vehicles, air compressors, and drills.

It is my sincerest hope that the oil and gas powers are right this time and that the land can, and will, be restored once they are finished with it. But recent events in the Gulf of Mexico only reinforce the facts that global oil and gas are largely oblivious to their roles as the primary agents of environmental stewardship and the seriousness that this demands of their enterprise and actions. Denial, apathy, sloppiness, dishonesty, disinformation, and the manipulation of the public and the media may protect their business interests in the short term, but it is our planet's health they have endangered for generations.