Dr Mike Challis works with Suffolk Wildlife Trust making detailed sound recordings of our nature reserves, sometimes with accompanying video. 

These recordings are an excellent way to capture data on our reserves including which species are present and the soundscape at different times of year. 

Currently, Mike is capturing the sounds of bitterns booming at our Worlingham Marshes nature reserve attempting, with sonograms, to match each 'boom' call to an individual. You can hear this work on display at the Raveningham Sculpture Trail until 7th September 2025. 

Read more about Mikes sound recording in this blog and be emersed in the calls of nature at our north Suffolk reserves. 

My name is Mike Challis and I am a Sound Artist, Maker and Educator.

I make soundscapes based on wildlife habitats and often fashion a sound sculpture out of the resulting material.

I started collaborating with Suffolk Wildlife Trust at Carlton Marshes in 2017 when I was asked to document the soundscape of the reserve. I visited the site several times and recorded the marshes at different times of day and in different seasons.

I made a sunrise video featuring the Lightening Trees at Carlton Marshes which showed a sunrise in real time whilst playing the dawn chorus from the marshes. 

This got many views on social media and my Vimeo channel. I put it in an acoustically treated cinema in a caravan and showed this at Raveningham Sculpture Trail. It also featured on the Firstlight Festival website during the lockdown year.

I documented the changes to Petos, an area part of Carlton Marshes nature reserve, in sound and video and made a short video that plays in the visitor centre all the time on a 4 min loop, ironically with the sound down, but you can watch it here.

One of the most amazing sounds I have recorded at Carlton is the sound of rutting Chinese water deer. I was recording just past dusk and they were rutting within 10 metres of me, in the darkness. Fortunately there was a fence between them and me!

To enable Suffolk Wildlife Trust to take the sounds of the marshes out to the people I built a quad sound player that could be set up in school, libraries or wherever out and about. With 15 sound samples of varying lengths on the player and the team can take people to specific places and times on the marsh, immersing them in nature wherever they are. One of the sounds is the rutting Chinese water deer. 

Having documented the changes in Petos, I was asked to do the same on Worlingham Marshes. I have started the process by getting baseline recordings on the site. It is different to Petos in that the marsh hasn’t been drained for agriculture. 

It has, in recent years, been managed for grazing and wild fowling. Under Suffolk Wildlife Trust, the management is becoming more wildlife friendly and great plans are in store. Listen to Lewis Yates about these in this video. 

There are cuckoos on site and I was treated to hearing the female cuckoo on my visits there. 

I have delivered workshops at Carlton Marshes over the last few years to show people how to use professional recording equipment or make a Potabolic (Parabolic style on a flower pot) and have led a 3 am listening walk to catch the sedge warblers and grasshopper warblers before dawn.

If you would like to join me on a workshop keep an eye on the events page for upcoming sessions.