BUFFALO, N.Y. — A few minutes of totality on April 8 might leave many speechless, but what impact does this sudden darkness have on nature?

It's one thing NASA will be tracking with a citizen science project called Eclipse Soundscapes.

“We have the deer, squirrels, and rabbits, a lot of different birds and woodpeckers, so a lot of different sounds,” said Jim York, a data collector for the eclipse soundscapes project and the volunteer bee coordinator at Knox Farm State Park.

York has a simple setup to get a glimpse of how wildlife’s conversations change during the celestial event.

“I'll come out here on Saturday and set the device up to record two days ahead, the day of the eclipse on the 8th, and then two days after," he explained. "After that, we collect the sound card and just send it back in."

It's meant to catch the birds and the bees and whatever else decides to fly, crawl or splash by.

“I was surprised how sensitive it is," York said. "We'd be able to hear that woodpecker [behind us]; we'd be able to hear that chickadee chirping; and about half a mile away, quite a ways down in the valley, there's a small pond where we can even hear geese honking.”

It's a modern method to recreate an experiment started 100 years ago.

“A gentleman [...] literally had people just recording what animals did during an eclipse," said York. "In general, they're trying to see: Do birds stop chirping? Do birds continue chirping? What about crickets? What about honeybees?”

Those critters don’t get the headlines.

“That's their trigger for their daily behaviors, [...] so if they're out and about foraging during the day, and suddenly the sun isn't there, they're not at home," he said. "I think part of the interest is also to study what do they do. Do they just stop and drop? Or do they try and slowly make their way back? Or do they completely lose their orientation?”

It’s something people will track throughout the path of the eclipse.

“It'd be interesting to kind of see what happens in the Midwest versus what happens in New York, because the weather is very different," York said. "So the response to nature was likely to be very different.”

So, when darkness falls, listen, and you just might find something new in that silence.

“Long before we had clocks and iPhones and cell phones and things to tell us when to get up and when to go to sleep, it was based on the cycles of the sun and the moon," explained York. "That's why it's I think so interesting. Fundamentally, it's really part of our core DNA, whether we know it or not.”

After this project, York and Knox Farm will be able to keep the recorder. York says he’d like to use it for future data collection as well.