Top Naturalist with 5 Million Followers Gives Squirrels a Voice: Find Out How!

Lyon (Rhône), reportage

For Charles Rose, trees groan like men, queen bees weep, and ant colonies crackle like campfires. At 28, Charles is an audio naturalist. To his over 5 million social media followers, he records the sounds of nature to “raise awareness about respecting life.”

Dressed in a lumberjack shirt and hiking boots, Charles, who recently moved to Lyon, sets out to explore the Parc de la Tête d’Or, a 100-hectare green oasis in the heart of the city.

“If it were up to me, I’d live in a cabin deep in the woods,” jokes Charles. For today’s expedition, he’s loaded his “sound hunter” backpack with a headset, a recorder, and about fifteen microphones, each serving a specific purpose: an hydrophone for water bodies, a geophone for lower frequencies, and more.

After a brief rain shower, the gray autumn sky cleared. “It’s a pity, I could have recorded the sound of the raindrops hitting the ground and leaves,” Charles remarks. With no rain, he seeks out a sound that “fascinates him every time”: the sound of moss.

“Sound is visible because it’s a vibration, produced when elements rub against each other, when living beings move,” explains the audio naturalist. He listens attentively to the rustling of tree leaves in the wind, the scurrying dung beetles on the damp earth, and the squirrel gathering provisions for winter.

An hour into the exploration, alert to every sound, he finds it along a path edge—the moss. Charles repeats the motions he knows by heart. He places his microphone, resembling a stethoscope, on the green velvet, as if taking its pulse. He is focused, listening to a language he understands. To the untrained ear, it might sound like a rumbling stomach. “It’s the stalks of the moss moving that create this gurgling noise,” he explains.

To elucidate the phenomena he records, Charles, who has no formal training in biology, regularly collaborates with experts. “One day, I was recording wind in the cornfields but heard a strange sound I didn’t recognize. After consulting scientific studies, I realized it was a bug vibrating the stalks to attract its mate. It’s incredible,” he shares.

To see him identify the call of a magpie within seconds, you might think the audio naturalist was born in the woods. Yet, this trained engineer grew up in the city. “I started connecting with nature relatively late, in my twenties. Since then, I’ve become a big kid; everything amazes me.”

A fan of electronic music, he incorporates the sounds of living creatures into his art: an animal’s cry becomes a synthesizer, a falling water droplet a percussion. He developed a passion for audio naturalism and took to social media.

“I don’t create: it’s the living beings that speak. I simply relay with my microphone,” says Charles, modestly refusing the label of content creator. Spending half his time in the field, the other half editing his sounds, he compiles “a vast sound library” that showcases the richness of our ecosystems. Museums, filmmakers, and even researchers use it for their projects.

“There’s a collector aspect to what I do. But I don’t like keeping my discoveries to myself; I enjoy sharing,” says Charles, whose work has an encyclopedic dimension.

He gravely describes a trip a few months ago to the Tuvalu islands in the South Pacific to record the sounds of the archipelago, as 95% of this territory could be submerged by century’s end: “These sounds now exist in a sound bank that will preserve the island’s memory,” explains Charles.

Today, over 40,000 species are threatened worldwide by climate change, according to the latest report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. For the audio naturalist, it is imperative to learn to respect nature: “I believe sound has a real power to raise awareness. By capturing the sound of an earthworm passing under our feet or a slug munching, I want to make the living being even more alive in the eyes of humans. And I think that maybe people will be more careful where they step.”

It finally starts to rain. Amidst the Sunday walkers, Charles is the only one rejoicing. “Let’s head towards the pond; it’s going to be great.” He pulls out a new microphone, immerses it, dons his headset. His expression immediately changes. He looks puzzled, his finger on his lip signifies confusion: “I’ve never heard this before. I’m so happy!”

To novices, the sound is not remarkable—a very high pitch, almost unpleasant to the ear. “It’s like the noise of grasshoppers or crickets, but underwater. Maybe small crayfish,” he muses aloud.

For long minutes, he listens, under the curious gaze of passersby. “Mom, what is that man doing?” Some approach, asking about the purpose of the long cable he winds around his hand.

“On a hike in Germany, I spent seven hours recording an ant colony. Naturally, hikers wonder who is this weird guy lying down with a headset,” he says, amused and accustomed to piquing curiosity.

A squirrel scurries down a tree and brushes against his hand, bringing a wide smile to the sound hunter’s face. There’s no time to get his microphones ready; the creature is too quick. “Sometimes, sound events happen all at once, and I’m not ready, but it’s still a beautiful moment,” he says.

The most memorable moment, perhaps, came a few months ago during an exploration in a Quebec forest. There, Charles encountered a moose. The animal was imposing. “It was very close, it could have charged. We looked at each other for a good two minutes. Then, it left. Nature was less fearful in Quebec,” he recounts.

A lover of nature and a vegetarian, Charles places respect for living beings at the heart of his practice. To avoid “disturbing” the “non-humans” he records, he has crafted a pole so as not to have to touch them.

At the edge of the North American turtle pond in the park, he gently approaches his microphone to a sleeping reptile. He gives up after a few minutes “to let her nap in peace.”

Because Charles Rose is human. Noisy. Through his expeditions, he has come to understand: nature is contaminated by the noise we make. “I’ve made several videos on noise pollution. For example, I dipped my microphone into the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec,” he explains. “You could hear the noise of ships passing several kilometers away, affecting marine mammals.”

The areas where only natural sounds can be heard have decreased by 50% to 90% compared to the pre-industrial era.

Night is about to fall on the Lyon park. Flocks of noisy birds fly overhead. “Wow, you can really hear them well at this time of the day,” marvels the audio naturalist. Indeed, for the attentive ear.

“Eyes have eyelids, ears do not,” he muses. “That phrase taught me to take the time to listen. A creak, a small animal prowling nearby… I believe the more we listen, the more we respect.”