Martha being, of course, the last of the billions of  passenger pigeons that inhabited North America until a few decades before she died in Cincinnati Zoo a hundred years ago this year.  My former RSPB colleague Mark Avery has written a book about Martha, her super-abundant ancestors and her message to those prepared to heed the warning of where today's mass bird declines might lead.

So I was fascinated to read in Mark's blog, taken over briefly by Bay Area musician Karla Kane, about a song Karla and her band the Corner Laughers have written in honour of this sad centenary.  She mentions another track dedicated to the critically-endangered California condor, which she studied for her masters; and a glance at their website reveals a lot of music inspired by birds.

The comments on Mark's blog mentions Texas-based band Shearwater, co-founded by another ornithologist, Jonathan Meiburg.  Indie-pop and Indie-rock being a little outside my normal universe (no sniggering at the back of the orchestra...), I'm wondering what else I'm missing out on and whether there is an eco-rock genre out there. Recommendations welcome!

Producer Robin Perkins's idea for a music fund-raiser to help endangered birds in South America has reached a key milestone.  The Kickstarter project to raise the production costs has been successful, and the project will definitely go ahead!

Robin, who wrote a guest blog about the project two weeks ago says: "thanks to dozens of supporters who donated through Kickstarter, we actually exceeded our target by 1200 euros, which means we can go ahead, and provide even more support for endangered species. Please pass on my thanks to readers of NATURAL LIGHT for their support".

The project involves getting musicians from seven different South American countries to record a track in response to the songs of eleven different endangered birds.  The resulting album will be sold to raise money for conservation in Ecuador.

As composer Jonathan Dove prepares for the premiere of his 'Gaia Theory' at the BBC Proms this week, he took time out to explain how his recent work has been inspired by an Arctic voyage that proved something of a wake-up call about the future of the planet.

In the second in our Nature at The Proms feature series we talk to Jonathan about that voyage, the works it has inspired, and his future plans.

Three artists come together on Radio 3 this evening to explore one of the best natural spectacles Britain has to offer.  The RSPB's Tony Whitehead is joined by author, musician and comedian David Bramwell and sound and visual artist Kathy Hinde to in search of the spectacular murmuration of starlings.  Tony says:

"The starling murmuration in Somerset is one of the great natural spectacles and it was a delight to share the experience with David for this programme that will be aired during the proms. I also look forward to hearing sound artist Kathy Hinde on the subject; certainly, the experience for me is as much about the sound as it is about the sight of millions of starlings flying to and from their roost in wetlands."

Of One Mind - a murmuration of starlings will be the Proms interval feature at 8.20 this evening and on the iPlayer for the next seven days.

Our first Proms Feature looks at four very different composers, from four different eras, each with a very different take on the Pastoral.  Beethoven and Vaughan Williams are two, of course, but who are the other two?

Take a look at our Nature at the Proms page to find out.

One day left to hear Arlene Sierra's Urban Birds on the BBC iPlayer. Birds and insects are often featured in Sierra's works – including two piano albums entitled Birds and Insects vols. 1 and 2. In . In Urban Birds recordings of blackcap, skylark and cuckoo and responses from three pianists form an intricately-textured piece.  It was broadcast on Hear and Now last Saturday as part of the first New Music Biennial. 

Other new commissions in the same concert included weather-generated sounds from instrument builder Yann Seznec.  Both composers explain to presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch how their pieces came about.

Happy birthday to Sir Harrison Birtwistle, our most important living composer, who is 80 today.  Sir Harry is prominently featured in this year’s Proms, which start at the end of the week.  He was also featured on this site when we launched a couple of weeks ago.  You can hear him talking about his boyhood interest in moths and watch a performance of the Moth Requiem from last year’s Proms here.

The Proms – at its fringe festival Proms Plus – will also mark the centenary of Gavin Maxwell, born exactly 100 years ago today, when two leading nature writers discuss his legacy.

Our feature series Nature at the Proms starts with a full run-down of new and familiar pieces influenced by environmental concerns, wildlife and landscape, along with interval features and literary discussions.

Robin Perkins, also known as producer El Búho, asked eleven musicians from across South America to create a track each, inspired by the song of a different endangered species.  NATURAL LIGHT invited him to write a guest blog.  He also sent us this video!

Robin says: 

From Patagonia to the Amazon rainforest, South America has some of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet. It is also home to an incredible range of bird species, many of which are under threat of extinction, such as the Hooded Grebe with only around 800 adults left in the wild or the critically endangered Araripe Manakin, endemic to Brazil.

Through A Guide to the Birdsong of South America I want to help tell their tale and spread their song through inspiring music by some of the continent's rising stars. 

The idea began a few years back when, as a producer I started experimenting with the idea of making music inspired by birdsong.  I knew a lot of bands and producers across the continent, and thought, why not use this to highlight the wave of exciting musicians across South America, as well as the plight of its wildlife?

I came up with a tentative list of threatened birds from the seven countries represented by the list of artists. Then I took this list to the community birdsong site Xeno Canto to source and get permission to use the rare song samples themselves. Once I had 22 birds, each musician chose their song and species and went to get inspired!

I wanted to ensure the project also supports the organisations working on the ground to protect these birds. I reached out to an NGO called Aves y Conservación, a partner of BirdLife International in Ecuador that works to protect and raise awareness about bird species. Proceeds from the album will support them and their work.

I have also been working with the graphic designer Scott Partridge who has created 12 unique illustrations, one for each species.

The list of artists is confirmed, they have chosen their birds and are now hard at work making their birdsong inspired tracks. These will be completed in the next month and from there I will send the tracks to be mastered and produce the album. Scott's bird designs are done and looking fantastic (see below) so we can't wait to get them printed!

Now I’m raising the 2,500 Euros needed for professional mastering, vinyl pressing and packaging, the illustrations, printing costs and the distribution all over the world. I have all of this lined up and ready to go. At the last count we had over 1700 Euro in the form of dozens of small donations through our Kickstarter project

Magic Oxygen Publishing - run by downshifters Simon and Tracey West - are running a literary competition that will raise funds for tree planting in Kenya.  Using sound ecological advice to avoid the pitfalls that afflict so many such schemes, they will plant a tree for every entry to the competition, which offers generous top prizes in poetry and short story categories.  So get scribbling!  Here's why...

...and here's the trailer...

The sounds of the natural world are orchestrated in a similar way to classical compositions, and are as emotionally moving.  This is the message from three people who share a mission to bring these sounds and the world of music together.  I went along to the Barbican in London yesterday to hear a public conversation between soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, composer Richard Blackford and BAFTA-winning sound recordist and sound artist, Chris Watson. 

Krause began by showing graphically how insects, birds and other songsters avoid using the bandwidths that are dominated by what he calls the geophony – the sounds created by the earth itself, of rivers, wind and the like.  And the biophony of animal sounds is divided into clear strata so that each species group makes sounds at the pitches avoided by everyone else.  Put this onto a sonograph and the similarity with a musical score is striking.

Krause and Oxford-based composer Richard Blackford have taken this idea and collaborated on a new work for orchestra and recorded soundscapes The Great Animal Orchestra, which is also the title of a book by Krause.  This work is premiered at the Cheltenham Festival on 12 July, and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. We were given a brief preview of the opening, with a projected sonograph to follow rather than a score.  This showed neatly how the orchestra emerges from the complex soundscape of the rainforest, via a C-sharp on which the gibbon’s dawn song ends, to be taken up by the violins.

Chris Watson - Northumberland based globe-trotting sounds man for the likes of David Attenborough - has been reflecting lately on the sounds that would have surrounded Eadfrith as he made his fabulous illuminations in the Lindisfarne Gospels.  It is hardly surprising, he says, that the island's creatures such as eider ducks and grey seals should feature in the manuscript; the human song-like sounds they make would have been unpolluted by the machines and traffic that was over a thousand years into the future.  He played his own recordings to make the point, and conjured a picture of grey seals singing in the misty distance, originating the many legends of half-human sea-creatures.

The previous evening, Arlene Sierra’s Urban Birds  for three pianos, electronics, sampled bird song and percussion formed part of a concert at the South Bank Centre.  Sierra, an American working in the UK and lecturing in Cardiff, is another composer for whom birds and insects are an important element in many of her works. In Urban Birds recordings of blackcap, skylark and cuckoo and responses from the pianists form an intricately-textured piece.  I was unable to get to the concert, but Radio 3’s excellent contemporary music programme Hear and Now features the whole concert later on the 12th, so radio listeners will be in for an evening of nature-inspired music next Saturday.

Music of the Wild - the sound of the living world took place at the Barbican on 6 July - click the button for a full review