The wind-catchers along the bottom of the valley miss nothing. Even the lightest breath has them whispering. And when the wind strengthens, they do a good imitation of the river streaming over boulders below their feet. Truly, when it blows, it pours.

Pass a poplar and you are enjoying the best example of psithurism, the sound of wind in trees. All this growing season, I have listened politely to oaks, alders and willows, but if I rocked up in a pub looking for chatty company, I’d want a poplar on the bar stool next to me.

The noisy leaves of a poplar. Photograph: Sarah Niemann

The name psithurism seems to have been conjured up from Greek roots as recently as the 19th century, yet the practice is as old as humanity. It exposes a curious and inescapable fact – wind itself has no voice. The explorer‑conservationist John Muir tramped many a mile through America’s wild lands, observing that “winds are advertisements of what they touch”.

He may well have been thinking of talkative, animated aspens, but all members of the poplar clan are physiologically equipped to shoot the breeze with a wide range of sound and movement. Every broad leaf, shaped like an ace of spades, is well separated from its neighbour on a long stem. Every leaf is therefore washing on a line. Blow, wind, blow.

Right now, conditions are what meteorologists call a fresh breeze, enough to bring out a sway and a swoosh, the noise a tide over fine pebbles, the sight upper trunks tilting back and forth to the rhythm.

The top boughs are visible evidence of wind as wave, for each sprig springs to life in turn, hundreds of leaves twirling at once. The overall effect is something akin to a host of green glitterballs. Close up, each leaf appears to be spinning in agony or ecstasy, desperate to break free or stay attached. Photosynthesis must be quite a giddy wonder, for how do rotating cells catch the sun?

Over the coming weeks, these wind chimes will break, their leaves raining down. And up above, in the so-tall trees, there will be a new percussion, the click-clack creak of branch on branch, the incoming drumbeat of winter.