If you were a castaway on a desert island, which “recordings” from nature would you take with you? My first choice would be the cries of the herring gulls that actually start the radio programme, Desert Island Discs. Who can hear seagulls without also seeing ice creams, fishing boats, buckets and spades, and feeling all the ordinary magic of the seaside? Second would be a swallow on a wire. Flowing like water, somehow the swallow’s song slakes a deep human thirst. My third sound is a bumblebee buzzing over our back lawn meadow.