That’s lovely, quite the scenic view.
Early 2000s I went on several Mission trips to central Mexico staying in city of San Luis Potosi. The first time we went out to desert village called Guadalupe Victoria. I don’t recall which whistles I had with me. They had some sort of small community building in the village with a little stage. We had few other musicians from our team and from church in San Luis. I had taught them a few jigs and reels - I can’t remember which ones as I was still fairly new to whistle playing. As soon as we began playing pretty much the whole village turned out and began dancing! I had the same experience on other trips in other towns and villages. They really seem to like Irish trad south of the border.
I also played a few solo tunes for fellow guests on Colorado River smooth water raft tour Glen Canyon Dam to Lees Ferry.
Many, many years ago (late seventies?), I was working in the Electronics lab at the Research School of Physical Sciences at ANU. A task I was presented was to design and build the electronics to drive the dome at the 48" Schmidt telescope up at Siding Springs, in the Warrumbungle ranges. The electronics simply had to keep the slot in the dome in front of the telescope as it ever-so-slowly followed the distant stars across the sky, and in particular to accelerate and decelerate it gently when moving it, to minimise rumbling the telescope.
And, having built and tested it, then to go up there and install and test it in operation. Our team would be away for a week. Needless to say, I packed a whistle. Never leave home without one…
I had plenty of time to myself, as the job of installing the massive hydraulic system that actually moved the dome far outweighed the time I needed to install my control system. So I spent quite a bit of time walking in the simply gorgeous bush, and finding nice places to play. I couldn’t play in or near the staff areas, as stargazers are nocturnal creatures, and need their uninterrupted sleep. But I enjoyed many outdoor experiences, including locations where you could hear the whistle reflecting from the next mountain along…
And while installing the equipment in the dome, I recognised its remarkable acoustics. Its essentially a half-sphere, so stand in the middle and you are at the focal point. Anything leaving there comes back there. Woah…
You can get some idea of the size of the telescope and its dome here. It’s daytime, so the telescope is in its rest position, rather than peering through the slot as it will in the night to come. The whistle felt a little puny by comparison. But with those acoustics, really loud!
Although I love the sound of tin whistles, their portability and ability to be brought into nature is one of the main reasons they’re one of my most frequently played instruments. In fact, I have a satchel I bring on most nature excursions full of tiny instruments. At the moment the crew of tiny instruments in my satchel are a telescopic Dante Music whistle, low D Doug Tipple flute, Jubo pendant ocarina, jaw harp, spoons, and little chimes from India called “karatala” (among other names). I never know which instrument will best suit the sounds and resonance of an ecosystem, and my mood too, so having a variety of instruments is nice.
In the winter I most often play along with the sounds of babbling brooks. I love the quiet, gentle trickles. The whistle seems to suit the playful nature of their sounds really nicely. And in winter the ice is different each time I visit, creating new resonation chambers and tones for the water to gurgle through. I usually start with a meditation, then an improvisation on the whistle, then another mediation, then some tunes.
In the summer, when flies in the woods are most intense, I rarely visit the brooks in the woods and play at wide river spots. Very few flies come out of the woods and out onto the rivers, aside from dragonflies and damselflies. And I love rivers too, so I’m glad to spend my summers whistling there. I sit on a fallen tree that stretches out a foot or so over the water and play whistle for hours, with occasional dips in the water between tunes.
Aside from rivers and brooks, I also often play whistle at bogs, marshes, and at the farm where I work at, where I play whistle as music therapy for the residents who live on the property that have developmental disabilities, and I play for the farm animals there too. Some farm animals seem not to care about the whistle one way or the other, but the chickens, geese, and pigs seem quite intrigued by it. Some animals in the natural ecosystems seem intrigued by the tin whistling too. I’ve had chickadees, nuthatches, a hummingbird, and an otter all come fairly close while tin whistling.
For distant travels, I once brought my whistle to a mangrove forest in Florida. The heat and strange ecosystem didn’t seem to suit the basic major scales I usually play up in New Hampshire, where I live. So I played around and came up with a scale that seemed to suit the odd ecosystem. The scale has a neat feeling to it, and only felt right when ascending the scale had different notes than when descending the scale. The jaw harp suited the mangrove forest well too. It could nicely mimic the ebb and flow of the tide gurgling through the mangrove tree roots.
The so-called Penny Whistles are so affordable that I’ve got a few placed strategically… ^
Currently my car whistle is a vintage Generation D – it’s remarkable how much more relaxed I am at the end of an urban drive when I get to play a quick tune on each red traffic light instead of just staring at it while hoping for green 
.
I like to take it out once in a while on my everyday bike rides, especially with far distance view of the seven church towers of my home city while sitting on meadow on a hill.
I’m not a big fan of hotels (too dull), but on business trips that’s where I find myself… Then I like to bring along my Parks whistle with the tone ring (it can be played really quietly!) which enables me to play some tunes ‘as kind of sundowner’ in my room without being heard by my neighbors.
When I’m on vacation trips, I always bring a cheap whistle along, most of the time it’s my old Sweetone which has a number of dents by now… Mainly it gets played out in nature, often with good views – most memorable was a special rocky mountain in New Zealand. And I have great memories of playing “Tripping up the stairs” on a sailing boat on the Baltic Sea, far away from the shore somewhere between Gdansk and Kaliningrad…
When visiting the remains of a less famous abbey in remote Scotland, the man at the entrance mentioned that I should sing a song in the chapel, because of the great acoustics. Well, I’m not a singer, but I turned around, digged out my whistle out of the panniers – and wow, I’ll never forget these goose bumps – what a massive sound can come from a 6 EUR whistle!
But needless to say, the most ‘species-appropriate’ occasions for playing whistles (IMHO) are in company in sessions. – Before Covid these used to be either at one’s home or in pubs. With Covid we’ve discovered great places for outdoor sessions – ranging from gorgeous green gardens to in between historic harbor buildings…
Happy whistling!
Where you ask?
A gentleman never tells…
I’m never far from my car, so I’ve taken to keeping a Dixon and a Generation in the car, do I can just grab it if I’m going to a park or trail.
Back in August, I was at my girlfriend’s birthday party, and everyone went down the hill to mess with the horses, so I stayed up top and drug it out. None of them except for Nicole knew I played.
It was a beautiful night, and they could hear it down the mountainside. Now a friend’s little girl has fallen in love with it, and Nicole’s nephew wants me to teach him drumming.
2 similar occasions come to mind, although not strictly relating 100% to the discussion title.
1 - mid 1990s, my wife and I were ending our first visit to Australia and were in Sydney the night before leaving. It may or may not still be there, but at that time the replica ship made for “Mutiny On The Bounty” filmed in 1984 starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins was sailing people around Sydney harbour in the evenings. There was a strolling minstrel on board, singing “The Leaving Of Liverpool”, sea shanties and suchlike. I noticed he had a whistle stuck in his back pocket, so asked if I could play a tune, and did so, “The Belfast” hornpipe, I think it was.
[ pS - how many of you knew that “Cooley’s” reel was played on “The Bounty”
https://youtu.be/ZtVZCtdlW58
2 - in 1992 my wife and I visited China. A complicated story, but we met a guy selling bamboo flutes, and I bought a few. We had a 3 day cruise on the Yangtse river, the second night had a “Captain’s karaoke night”, which neither of us fancied much, so we got a bottle of wine and sat at the stern of the boat, and I decided to have a try out of the flutes. Somehow or other , the reel variously known as “The Culfadda / Kilfodda / Cruel Father” came into my head. I had never played it before, although was familiar with it through several recordings. I maintain to this day that I learned “The Culfadda Reel” on the Yangtse river.