Our problem is that sound is not important in our culture. We know the world from the visual, not from the other senses. I had to be taught other ways of understanding.- Bernie Krause
Just after my brother, Mark, & the Duchess were married they came for an overnight visit with us. The Duchess did not sleep well. She complained our nights were very noisy. Having not heard a thing all night I was more than a little perplexed ~ until I realised I was used to the curlews shrieking, the bitterns booming, the plovers craking, the mopokes mopoking, the thump of wallabys down the hill & the scuttling of bandicoots through the ferns but for the Duchess each & every noise was unknown ~ & there were a lot of them.
I will also freely admit Australian wildlife is notorious for making a wide variety of weird & wonderful sounds but I know most of the regular sounds round here...& yes, I sleep through them all.
Just recently however there have been a whole series of weird shriekings, chitterings, coughs & splutterings, hissing & spittings going on in the branches overhead at night. I was pretty sure it was an owl but which one? Not one of our regular visitors who make a range of strange sounds but nothing like the shennanagins going on recently. So Siano & I went on~line. We're pretty sure we have a barn owl nest in a hollow tree close by. This is what we're hearing. Sorry, you'll have to scroll down to the barn owl calls & hit *typical call*. Unnerving is what it is. The other sound we are hearing must be the chicks.
I was just getting used to the owls fussing when something much closer to ground level started up. Not the Ooomp ooomp of green tree frogs sounding as if they've been jammed headfirst down our drain pipes but a aaaaa~ak, aaaa~ak like rusty hinges, only very loud!
This beauty belongs to the green tree frog family~ the orange eyed tree frog, Have a listen & see what I'm complaining about. Scroll down to calls & click on the link. All night long he's been going. Nice from an ecological point of view & I guess I'll get used to it in a night or two.
5 comments:
It is always more fun to making one's own noise in nature's orchestra rather than in the audience listening to unfamiliar songs.
It would likely have been the barn owl we have a pair nesting occasionly in the trees behind us and they look exactly like that barn owl as we got a good look at them.
Wow, what a symphony!
Hi Ganeida,
Wow, what an assortment of nocturnal wildlife you have, and that orange eyed tree frog is just beautiful.
We get bats here on calm summer nights, the occasional owl and maybe a kangaroo or two, but nothing like the sounds that you hear.
Have a great week,
Blessings,
Jillian
Seeking: I don't like noises I can't identify. ☺
LLL: Pics from photobucket. I haven't even got a real good look at what's making this amount of noise yet.
Richele: & yet, if you had asked me, I would have said our nights are very quiet. I guess by that I'd mean almost no traffic noise.
Jillian: Bats we have ~ especially when everything's in flower. Most of our night noise though is different species of birds.
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