Gardening for a Concert
Whether you have a lot of space or a small front yard, you can create habitat
that can be a concert stage for avian and singing insect musicians
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Even a shady backyard like mine can host many birds, crickets, and katydids
if they have the habitat they need. Garden for birds will often be beneficial for singing insects as well.
Gardening for a Concert: creating concert halls for nature’s music from parks to your backyard.
From bird songs in the spring and summer to an evening chorus of crickets and katydids in later summer into fall, we can invite and welcome nature’s chorus into our yards and gardens. A large park may have a full-sized orchestra, but the intimacy of a chamber ensemble singing close to our homes is also very rewarding. If we know what the performers need to create their music, we can begin to provide a setting in which they will thrive.
Lisa Rainsong holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music and is a member of CIM’s music theory faculty. A soprano as well as a teacher and composer, she also earned a Naturalist Certificate from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where her study focused on field experience. She now teaches birdsong, amphibian song, and insect song classes across the state and does field recording of bird songs and insect songs. In addition, she does field research on crickets and katydids – research work that is done primarily by ear. Her recordings and photos can be found on her blog, Listening in Nature at http://listeninginnature.blogspot.com