THE SONGS OF BIRDS.
THE SONGS OF BIRDS. I posted yesterday about how my young son heard the noise of crickets, and I heard it only when he called it to my attention. Mary Jane is fond of the passage in the book THE YEAR 1000 (by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger) that says that if we had lived in rural England in that year we would have found it noisy with the songs of birds. I am afraid, however, that if I had lived in rural England, I would have learned not to hear the birds. When we first moved to the suburbs from New York City, we spent the first night in our new home without air conditioners and so with the windows open. The bird songs seemed raucous. Mary Jane exclaimed, “Those are parrots out there. We’re living in a jungle.” The jungle birds are still there, but we only hear them when we make a point of listening.
I have a theory (!) that one becomes more sensitive to noise when one is trying to fall asleep. Every little whisper of a roommate and creak of the house seems louder and more intrusive when one is trying to sink into sleep. With regards to the birds, I didn’t usually notice the sounds of birds when I’d get up at dawn to go to high school, but when I’m going to sleep at dawn (as I am wont to do), I hear them loud and clear.