The country is so quiet – really?
When friends visit us, usually the first thing they say is that it is so quiet! It is true that there are no fire trucks blasting, horns honking, A/C humming and people shouting. But after a while, they hear the birds singing and the frogs croaking. In the silence they first think they ‘hear’, there is an abundance in the universe of sounds, but they are not as intrusive as city noise.
When we moved here, I bought a bird book and studied it. I wanted to refer to the birds with their proper names. I started a bird list that had over a hundred names on it. My “birder” friend told me that I only could enter a bird name if I had another person confirm my sighting. In addition, she told me to identify birds through their songs. She said that by knowing the birds’ songs, she knew far more about which birds she may spy nearby, than by trying to spot them. How would I do that? Fortunately, I found the book of ‘250 North American Birds Songs’. When you see the picture of a particular bird in the book and press a button on the side, you hear the song this bird is singing. In the course of time, I could identify songs of birds I have never seen.
When we moved here, I bought a bird book and studied it. I wanted to refer to the birds with their proper names. I started a bird list that had over a hundred names on it. My “birder” friend told me that I only could enter a bird name if I had another person confirm my sighting. In addition, she told me to identify birds through their songs. She said that by knowing the birds’ songs, she knew far more about which birds she may spy nearby, than by trying to spot them. How would I do that? Fortunately, I found the book of ‘250 North American Birds Songs’. When you see the picture of a particular bird in the book and press a button on the side, you hear the song this bird is singing. In the course of time, I could identify songs of birds I have never seen.
The most raucous of all our birds is the wren. In German he is called ‘Zaunkönig’ (king of the fence). This tiny bird sings and sings in front of my house while the female is building the nest. When the female is sitting on the eggs and later feeding the young, he is appearing once a day and singing his heart out for half an hour and then he leaves. (He is entertaining other households near our barn and and egg house).
I do not know if humming birds have a song, but I can identify them easily by the noise they make when they fly. The wings move so rapidly that you can hear them coming when they are yards away. In addition, they wage battle over the feeder. Sometimes, when I doze in my recliner outside, the sound of their buzzing aerial dogfights around the feeder, evoke images of propeller driven fighter planes wheeling about each other in the sky. Of course this has prompted us to put up another feeder to defuse their fights.
I do not know if humming birds have a song, but I can identify them easily by the noise they make when they fly. The wings move so rapidly that you can hear them coming when they are yards away. In addition, they wage battle over the feeder. Sometimes, when I doze in my recliner outside, the sound of their buzzing aerial dogfights around the feeder, evoke images of propeller driven fighter planes wheeling about each other in the sky. Of course this has prompted us to put up another feeder to defuse their fights.
One day I was outside when I heard the meow of my cat Fyre. I looked around, could not spot him, and was puzzled. Then I noticed a beautiful gray mocking bird imitating Fyre who was sleeping upstairs after a strenuous half an hour of cleaning himself. You will be blessed to attract a mating pair of mocking birds. One pair can imitate a whole range of other sounds, so that a single pair can sound like a menagerie outside your house!
The frogs in the pond are another chorus in our symphony. Apparently, each night they have a discussion round scheduled. Whether they are discussing mating, politics or the stock market, I have not figured out yet, but I hear their vigorous exchanges each evening
The frogs in the pond are another chorus in our symphony. Apparently, each night they have a discussion round scheduled. Whether they are discussing mating, politics or the stock market, I have not figured out yet, but I hear their vigorous exchanges each evening
In the wintertime, the birds depend on the feeder. When I go and hang the full feeder on the wire, I am suddenly surrounded by one particular bird alert. Each species has a separate call, but they all recognize the calls of the others and when one bird spots the meal being served, it ripples through the other species nearby. As soon as I am inside, I can sit in my bay window and watch as a dozen different types of birds arrow in from all directions.They inform each other that food has arrived, each eating a different part of the mix we provide, and each benefiting from the the alerts of the others.
Before we moved here, a local friend told me that it was so quiet at his place, that he could hear a single car coming from a ¼ mile away. I found it hard to believe, but it is true. On our dead end road, we can hear passenger cars coming as far as a mile away. But the ‘silence’ that our visitors think they ‘hear’ (they cannot hear the distant cars when we point them out), slowly gives way to the wonderful conversations of all the animals around us, as they alert and warn each other to threats and food and safety. Those, much quieter conversations, are what keep us here.
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