Summer Sounds
It's quiet here on the sunset side of the country. It's late summer now but the high scratchy background whine of cicadas that defines a hot, lazy afternoon is missing. The noisy insect sounds of a humid day are not heard in this place.
Summer sounds here are different than what I grew up with. It's very quiet except for the motor wing-buzz of hummingbirds near our heads as we sit on the patio. They're getting very aggressive at the feeder now, and one brilliantly red throated male is a chirper. He's never silent, he squeaks all the time.
But there is no constant whine of insects here. Days are quiet as we wait for monsoon rains. Clouds and isolated thunderstorms pop up in the afternoon, dissipate, re-form and suddenly dump rain on us or near us or over the mountains. Thunder rumbles.
I miss that loud constant whine of cicadas -- it was such a summer sound. I do not miss the humidity or the roar of air conditioning that drowned out any lazy insect sounds. We do run the AC here for a couple hours in the late afternoon. By 3 p.m. the sun heats up our box of a house but after dinner we can open the windows and let cool dry outside air back in.
There's not much sound to our summer days. Birds chirp (we don't really have warblers here), and hummingbirds buzz and butterflies are silent in their erratic drift over the fence line.
The damn pigeons, though.
They make an intrusive woo, woo-woo sound and their flapping flappy wings disturb the silent lull of our summer days.
Summer sounds here are different than what I grew up with. It's very quiet except for the motor wing-buzz of hummingbirds near our heads as we sit on the patio. They're getting very aggressive at the feeder now, and one brilliantly red throated male is a chirper. He's never silent, he squeaks all the time.
But there is no constant whine of insects here. Days are quiet as we wait for monsoon rains. Clouds and isolated thunderstorms pop up in the afternoon, dissipate, re-form and suddenly dump rain on us or near us or over the mountains. Thunder rumbles.
I miss that loud constant whine of cicadas -- it was such a summer sound. I do not miss the humidity or the roar of air conditioning that drowned out any lazy insect sounds. We do run the AC here for a couple hours in the late afternoon. By 3 p.m. the sun heats up our box of a house but after dinner we can open the windows and let cool dry outside air back in.
There's not much sound to our summer days. Birds chirp (we don't really have warblers here), and hummingbirds buzz and butterflies are silent in their erratic drift over the fence line.
The damn pigeons, though.
They make an intrusive woo, woo-woo sound and their flapping flappy wings disturb the silent lull of our summer days.
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