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Sounds of Nature: Music or Noise?
Years ago, I was visiting with an acquaintance about living in our residential community. She loved it here, she told me, but she couldn’t stand the nighttime racket. I must have looked puzzled and asked what she was describing — THE FROGS CROAKING ALL NIGHT!
I looked at her with a stunned expression. Seriously?! I love to lay in bed, listening to the frogs chirp their delight at being drenched by recent rain. Their chorus was music to my ears.
Don’t misunderstand. I would never describe myself as a nature nut. Like most people, I love clear blue skies, walking on a mountain trail, admiring a rainbow after an afternoon rain, and breathing in the clean air.
But my favorite natural experiences often are the sounds of nature– so delightful, soothing, even invigorating to me.
So, what are my favorite sounds?
- the rain falling softly on a summer’s night
- the raucous trumpet of the sandhill cranes, sometimes from miles away, calling out to each other
- a single tiny tree frog speaking its mind
- a gentle breeze wafting through the palm trees
- the crackle of leaves blown on the asphalt street
- intermittent and varied calls of the cardinal
- thunder crashing its protest at the humid air
- the roar of water dancing through an overflowing gorge
- the rumble of the ocean’s waves
When the world in so many respects is filled with jarring noise—war, arguing, technology—it is reassuring and comforting to know that nature’s sounds of music can be still be found; we only need to listen.
What are your favorite sounds of nature?
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This is New York, so we have boids. They choip.
One of the reasons I’m not crazy about Florida is the wildlife that doesn’t make noise… fire ants, snakes, alligators…
Well, yeah, there is that, Doug. Picky, picky, picky. But you have nasty blizzards! And they can make a lot of noise!
I have fond recollections from very-rural Missouri of distant packs of coyotes howling at night. It’s an eerie, otherworldly sound. Makes you want to bar the gates and put logs on the fire.
Probably not most people’s idea of a favorite sound. I like minor-key stuff.
I think their howl is amazing. I don’t hear them in FL, but we would hear them in the hills when we lived in San Clemente. Every now and then we’d even see one walking casually down our street in the daytime!
To borrow a line from Don Williams: “I can still hear the soft southern winds in the live oak trees …”
Lovely.
Here in the Sierra Foothills, we have tree frogs everywhere and it’s easy to sleep to their croaking. It’s like a living Sound Current of Life.
I once spent a couple of days in Kyoto, Japan, in September. Sweltering hot, but the lovely part of it was the millions upon millions of cicadas. Every temple garden and different cicadas with different songs that would THRUM through the air.
Then slowly the sound would die down over minutes until only one cicada held the tune. Then slowly they would build up again and THRUM again.
Not an experienced to be missed, second only to the cherry blossoms in Japan in the Spring.
We heard the cicadas on our camping trips here in the U.S. The waves of songs were amazing, but I think you had a very special experience in Kyoto. (We were there, too, but no cicadas!) Thanks, Mark
Arizona is a desert state. The loveliest sound is rain, especially at night when you are in bed.
It is also a little more disconcerting when they go into a yelping frenzy no more than 100 yards away. That makes the hair on my neck rise up.
This is our experience in the high desert of southeastern Riverside county in California.
Yes. I remember that from my time in Tucson. One of the nice things about Missouri was that it was always miles away, over the rolling green hills. We occasionally heard mountain lions, too, but they aren’t pleasant… more like a woman screaming. Quite unsettling.
“. . .and those Williams boys, they still mean a lot to me. . .”
Just at dawn, as a new day breaks, the sounds of peacocks alighting on the roof like fifteen pound bags of wet cement, all while giving their haunting call that sounds like someone is throttling a goose with a set of bagpipes.
The sounds are clearest late at night and at dawn when I take out the dogs for their relief. At those times I am clearly reminded that we share the planet with much more numerous life forms. Things will really ramp up in the summer when the cicadas come on line.
I knew an ex Navy Seal who, decades ago in a more rural area, had neighbors with peacocks who failed to constrain their wanderings. After many attempts requesting sequestering, he went out one night in camouflage with his crossbow and took them all out. Nobody ever knew what happened.
Nice hair, by the way!
Wouldn’t the crossbow bolts give it away?
Not if he recovered them.
Crickets
Unless they start rubbing their legs together in the house in the middle of the night. Actually it’s that single cricket that can drive me mad. Otherwise, they’re wonderful as background music–from outside.
Camping at 11,000 feet in Colorado–the sounds of Elk bugling.
I love the sounds of rain and thunderstorms the best; they make for a very cozy time to read curled up with a blanket. I also like animal sounds, such as birds and frogs, but I do have trouble focusing sometimes, and if there is one particularly loud bird or frog, it may hinder me in that arena. No noises seem to cause me to have trouble sleeping, though, which I am seriously grateful to God for. 😅
Like this?
Fire crackling is a nice sound, too.
I miss having a fireplace, too, in FL. Makes it even cozier!
I love the sound of chirping birds. It’s springtime now and there hosts of finches chirping at barely dawn. We also have an owl that will sometimes sit on our roof or our neighbor’s and hoot for a while. The owls are a real treat.
You could say his soothing voice is a sound of nature.
Definitely one of the sounds I grew up with.