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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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I remember hearing some one from Manhattan, with all its sirens, honking, etc., complain that they can’t fall asleep in the country because it is too loud. Hearing the spring peepers this time of year, I can kind of understand.
Yes, although not always so high-pitched, depending on the mood of the elk. The other perhaps more awesome ‘sound’ is the silence in-between. And the starlight. Some of my best memories…
Enjoy!
I see how Don got that husky voice.
I really like the sound of spring peepers in the evening, but at least one of my kids thinks that sound is creepy. I don’t get it.
I was trying to think of a way to describe the raucous cry of a peacock, but you beat me to it. I think you got it exactly right.
Around the first of August the katydids start making noise at night. Its not necessarily a pleasant sound, kind of raspy, but I like it. I look forward to it every summer. In the Fall when temperatures drop they slow down noticeably. I’ve never even seen one as they stay up in the trees and blend in with the leaves, but they are loud.
Yes. It’s rutting season and, just from the sound, it’s obvious what’s on their mind.
On one of my earliest trips to Africa I was staying at a farm in rural Kenya. There was no electricity out there and limited phone/internet. I would sit out on the front porch and watch the world go by…slowly. I remember one morning when I could see the rain coming from far away. It was completely silent except for the rustle of the trees. I could hear the rain approaching. It was like I could hear every raindrop since there were no other sounds to interfere. It is one of the most amazing sounds I have ever heard and that memory persists to this day.
Beautiful! I haven’t seen parents and chicks in a long time; I rarely see two chicks. I suspect that raptors gobble them. They are so adorable!
We haven’t seen “parents” and chicks around for a while. Often there is only one chick; the other probably makes a raptor dinner. The babies are so cute!
Well, there are coyote sounds, and coyote sounds. There are the aouwwwww, aouwwww sounds they make when they’re just chatting, or perhaps when they hear a fire station, or ambulance, siren somewhere in the distance which sets them off. Those are perfectly fine.
Then there are the yip! yip! yip! yip! yip! triumphal sounds a pack of them makes. sounds which mean “Target acquired and neutralized. Come eat!!” Last time I heard that particular noise of nature on my property in the wee hours of the morning, I discovered the reason for it the following morning at the bottom of my field:
Since then, the noise I like most, when it’s associated with coyotes, is a loud “BANG.”
As a kid, I always liked the sound of a cardinal singing in the morning. Florida cardinals tend to have a rapid, more urgent sound (cardinals don’t migrate so they have regional accents) than do cardinals up north. It was familiar and reassuring.
In the summer when we decamp to the mountains in Pennsylvania, the soft sounds of juncos on the front porch and the partnership of downy woodpeckers, titmice, and chickadees (black-capped) arriving later in the morning are also somehow reassuring.
I love the sound of rain on the roof, especially when I am in bed.
I have birds outside my office all day, but they are not very loud. I like the sounds of life.
I dislike crickets, that constant drone in the summer. We spray for mosquitos, which also eliminates ticks and other buggies.
I love the sound of birds. I love to sit on the back porch steps early in the morning and listen to the dawn chorus. My sister sometimes asks me to do that when we chat on the phone on Saturday mornings, because she and her husband love to hear them too. (They live on the Isle of Skye, which has its own nature sounds, but the gentle waking up of dozens of bird species in the fields isn’t one of them.)
The sounds of birds was one of my greatest joys on my visit to Thailand in 2018, and I have several bits of audio recording of creatures (no idea what they are) making sounds I’ve never heard in this part of the world.
I love the sound of Chinggis–my rooster–vaunting his male privilege most of the day. (Why should he not? He’s the only male in a harem where he enjoys the attention of four handmaidens.)
And the sheep and lambs. I love their sounds too. Except at 5 degrees below zero fahrenheit when a ewe and I are trying to deliver a lamb who (it seems) doesn’t want to be born.
I love the sounds of my puppy squeaking with joy when he sees me, or when he thinks I’m about to give him a treat. And I praise him to the skies when he barks, in his puppyish way, at people he doesn’t know who come to the gate or into the driveway. I hope he’ll always serve as my alarm and protector that way.
I remember, as a small child, lying in bed and listening to the “laughing hyenas” out in the bush. And the “pye dogs” (wild and/or free-range dogs, many of which were rabid). Those sounds weren’t particularly comforting. But once again, the birds were marvelous. Perhaps that’s where my attachment to bird sounds began.
Nature is what it is. Sometimes it’s “red in tooth and claw.” Sometimes, it’s gentle, ennobling, and forgiving. Pretty much like everything else.
I HATE foxes yowling at night. They sound like tortured children.
What a rich sharing, She. Thanks so much. (Love that puppy.)
Thank you, Susan. And thanks for graciously hosting me in your neck of the woods, slightly over two years ago (we made it just under the wire before the world went mad). Looking out your lovely big windows, enjoying the orchids in your lanai, and seeing the tropical birds brought back lovely memories from my earliest childhood, and have become fond memories of you and Jerry in and of themselves. Truth be told, I wasn’t so wild when I was minding my business on the lawn and the brown thing I’d been paying absolutely no mind suddenly snapped (so to speak) to attention, revealed itself to be a several-foot-long alligator, and slithered into the water. As a result of one of Dad’s postings, he and Mum spent a year or so living on a houseboat on the Niger river. They used to talk about waking up in the morning and finding themselves surrounded by hippopotamuses viewing them suspiciously and snorting steam out of their nostrils. That’s what it reminded me of.
I like the sounds of soft rain, and moderate wind through the trees. When wide awake, I also like harder rain and thunder, except when the thunder is so close that it gives that crack-crack-crack effect at first, which is startling.
I have a mixed view of animal sounds. I probably wouldn’t like frogs, but living in Arizona, this is not an issue. I don’t like crickets chirping, though I think that some people from the South find them soothing. Birds are a mixed lot, usually favorable, but some aren’t so pleasant (crows come to mind). The screech of a hawk is pretty cool, and I like songbirds. I can’t think of any insect sounds that I like.
One that’s pretty Arizona-specific is the grunts of a pack of javelina, which I generally like, as long as they’re not keeping me awake.
He should attack the geese from time to time to have them remember who is highest on the food chain.
Just about all the sounds listed here are available as “sleep backgrounds” on YouTube. I’ve found one with thunder and rain, except the rain is on a tin roof. It sounds just like the bedroom I used at my grandmother’s farmhouse when I was a kid.
I always loved the first sounds of spring peepers since that was the unofficial end to the hard Ohio winters (harder than what they are now).
Number 2 on my list would be the sound of rain on the roof (along with plenty of thunder and lightning).
Number 3 would be the sounds of the “90 day” cicadas which herald the coming end of summer and the first frost.
Hard to fathom how city folks can get used to the sound of traffic lulling them to sleep.
How about a nice lyre bird?
There don’t seem to be any that last all night.
In this season our current serenade is mostly bird sounds, particularly geese and ducks, since we live a couple hundred yards from the neighborhood’s irrigation holding pond, and the migratory birds have apparently adopted it as a flyway/byway stop over. We seem to be under the approach path. It’s also the season when we have to go out back and persuade amorous geese that our couple acres is a bad place to raise a family.
And for some reason he liked to sculpt penises. Really!
Also available on Roku…
I spent my teenage years in the Ozarks. On summer nights there were frogs, crickets, cicadas occasionally, coyotes, and probably more that I forget. It got very loud at times but the only thing that bothered me was a whippoorwill that liked to perch outside my bedroom window at night and sound off. I was plotting to ambush him with a shotgun but my parents put a stop to that.
One of the odd things about the UK is that they don’t have any crickets!
Oh, man. Here I loved that sound when I was there.
That bird wasn’t close enough to your window!