Today's Geo Quiz sent us in search of the Alps. But if you picture yourself yodeling away against the backdrop of the Swiss alps, then you're way off course.

The Alps were looking for --- are in the southern hemisphere as The World's David Leveille explains:

There's another impressive mountain range called the Alps....down under. These are the Australian Alps; they straddle New South Wales and Victoria. Far from Australia's scorched outback territories, these Alps are the only place in Australia where it snows regularly.

The mountains are home to these birds: called bell miners. Picture a grey tinged bird with a bright yellow beak about the size of a blackbird.

Paul Jacobson made this recording on a recent weekend outing:

“The recording of the bell miners was one of the first recordings that I made and was done at a nature reserve at a place called yelling bow they don't look too spectacular but their calls are really quite magical especially when you have a colony of them calling from the tops of eucalypts and echoing around the forest gullies sort of the chiming of the bellbirds.”

Jacobson is an experienced bird watcher. He made this recording at the bottom of a 900 foot gorge on the Lerderderg River (ledaderg). It like any old babbling brook --- but if you close your eyes you might see crimson rosellas making the pings, fairy wrens, golden whistlers and maybe even a kookaburra laughing in the distance.

Jacobson thinks of his recordings as snapshots of time and place. In that sense, he follows in the footsteps of 19th century French artists who painted their impressions of light and landscape. Monet for instance used quick brushstrokes to capture his impressions of light dancing off water-lilies or reflecting off snow.

But instead of paintbrushes and an easel, he totes a digital recorder, stereo microphones, and a birding guidebook. All in an effort to capture something that's transient:

“For me its been a way of capturing these wonderful soundscapes that sort of exist out there very fleeting I mean by the time the recording ends the birds are winding down and settling into their daytime much lower intensity, shortly after that you start getting airliners flying over the park's situated under a main route between Melbourne and Canberra and Sydney the whole environment and the soundscape changes.”

This is Jacobson's favorite recording. It's a dawn chorus in Mt Samaria State Park ...A scenic getaway famous for its waterfalls, tall stands of eucalyptus trees, and diverse bird life flying in all directions and singing.

“Well it is a bit of cacophony really, but I think its really a document of the huge amount of energy to welcome in the dawn of t he day...what I believe they're doing it seems to be kind of a declaration of territories birds are telling their neighbors that they've survived the night they're calling out to their partners saying hi I' m still here that's kind of my take on it.”

Jacobson's take on how to make a good sound recording sounds like tip from a good photographer:

To get a good dawn chorus you have to be in the right place at the right time...in this case minutes before a 5am sunrise when the birds are declaring they're alive and well in this corner of wet Eucalyptus tree forest nestled in the Australian Alps.