Project aims to archive Western animal sounds

SALT LAKE CITY -- Rattlesnakes aren't to be trifled with but if you're trying to collect the sounds of every creature in the West that slithers, hops, flies or flops, distance isn't a luxury you can afford.

"You get yourself in some strange situations," said Jeff Rice, a soft-spoken University of Utah research librarian who's trying to create the first comprehensive — and free to the public — archive of natural sounds in the West.

Minutes later he was squatting in the hills above the city training his lightweight parabolic microphone toward a Great Basin rattlesnake a few feet away.

The snake, caught by wildlife agents earlier in the day in a backyard, offered a few doubtful quiet moments.

Finally, though, it let loose a long dry rattle, both eerie and fascinating, that unmistakably said keep away.

Rice, decked out in black headphones and a gray sweatshirt, grinned like he'd been given a Christmas present.

"I knew he'd come through," he said.

The recording, reduced to a short clip, will be the next added to the Western Soundscape Archive, a Web-based sound clearinghouse headquartered at the University of Utah library.

Though it's just a year old, the site already has more than 800 recordings of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians from 11 Western states. It'll also feature "ambient soundscapes" from wild places across the region.

The sounds will be available to teachers, scientists and anyone else interested in hearing the odd murmurings of a sage grouse, javelina, Columbia spotted frog or mountain-dwelling moose.

The landscape recordings could also provide an important audio snapshots that could used for comparison later when trying to understand how animals respond to encroaching subdivisions, oil and gas development, a warming climate or other changes.

Repeat photography can reveal changes in a limited area but repeated recordings offer broader insights, said Kurt Fristrup, a scientist with the National Park Service's natural sounds office in Fort Collins, Colo.