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Relax

Games in the woods

(recording, 1 hour, 47 minutes)

Take in the sounds of woodland creatures, babbling brooks, rumbling thunder and pouring rain to help you relax and unwind. This dedicated playlist was created for the Urban Tree Festival in 2021.

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Photo of trees, Mount St Helens by Jason Leem courtsey of Unsplash

Flora

(online image gallery)

From sweat peas to sunflowers, step inside a beautiful garden with our selection of lush botanical illustrations and floral images from the British Library's collections.

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British Library digitised image from page 320 of "St. Helena: a physical, historical, and topographical description of the island ... The botanical plates from original drawings by Mrs. J. C. Melliss"

British wildlife recordings: songbirds

(recording, almost 300 tracks running to several hours)

Can you tell a bullfinch from a blackbird? Test your knowledge of the natural world by listening to our collection of short recordings of British songbirds, recorded in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Blue tit perched on fence, photo by Bob Brewer courtesy of Unsplash

Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal

(online resource)

Open up Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, a book of beautiful plants, written in the 1700s. The book was an exceptional artistic, scientific and commercial undertaking for a woman of her time. She drew, engraved and coloured the illustrations herself, mostly using plants from the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

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Find out more about Elizabeth Blackwell's remarkable life in this blog post

Illustration of an iris from Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal

Underwater field recordings

British Library Sound Archive (playlist, 59 minutes)

From a humpback whale singing in the Caribbean Sea to the metallic creaks of a Victorian pier, these underwater recordings from the British Library sound archive reflect the diversity of life in our marine and freshwater habitats. Some sections take inspiration from the slow radio movement, inviting the listener to pause and enjoy the silences as much as the sounds. These calmer moments are peppered with more energetic bursts of activity.

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The British Library is home to a collection of over 250,000 catalogued wildlife and environmental sound recordings covering all classes of sound-producing animals from all zoogeographical regions. Explore more at the British Library Sound Archive

Whaleshark, photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri courtesy of Unsplash