Botanic Garden's Sound Trail: Dawn Chorus - Simpson Shade House

Botanic Garden's Sound Trail takes place in the Palm House and The Simpson Shade House over the Nature Festival 1st - 15th of October. Presented in the Simpson Shade House, South Australian visual artist Amber Cronin presents Dawn Chorus. 

Dawn Chorus, is the result of Amber Cronin undertaking an Artist in Residence with Nature Conservation Society of South Australia’s (NCSSA) Mount Lofty Ranges Woodland Bird Monitoring Program. 

The artist Amber Cronin visited monitoring sites with staff and spent time with the surveyors, seeking to understand this dedicated community and connect with their source of passion. Amber recognised sound as a key element in the collection of data and decided to focus on that element to create this reflection on this legacy project. Working with vocalist Emma Borgas (The Adelaide Chamber Singers) and composer Kaurna Cronin, Amber has created a complex and multi-layered soundscape that is plangent and affecting. This work does more than honour the birds; it also recognises the human communities they touch. Haunting and elegiac, Dawn Chorus gives shape to a sense of loss, while also paying tribute to the beauty of birdsong.

The Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia is nationally recognised for its ecological significance as one of Australia’s ‘biodiversity hotspots’. The Mount Lofty Ranges Woodland Bird Monitoring Program is a long-term monitoring program, initiated by Professor Hugh Possingham, Drew Tyre and Dr Scott Field in 1999. It aims to collect & assess evidence for population declines in woodland birds through repeated surveys of 165 sites throughout the Mount Lofty Ranges. By observing, recording and understanding the changes happening to a group of bird species, NCSSA can contribute to regional conservation management through landscape scale decision making. 

Find out more about the Mount Lofty Ranges Woodland Bird Project: https://www.ncssa.asn.au/mount-lofty-ranges-woodland-birds/

Find out more about Nature Conservation Society of South Australia: https://www.ncssa.asn.au/