Cacophony at Dusk

Here in central North Carolina it is full-on spring.  The days are getting longer, we are getting a lot of rain (this is very important as we have been in a terrible drought since last summer), the trees are producing lung-clogging amounts of pollen, and the birds are nesting and generally going crazy.

Blackbird Corner The other day I took a walk at dusk through my neighborhood and was ear-witness to the most amazing bird activity as the world passed from twilight to night.  My first taste of the bird life in my neighborhood at dusk came as I approached a cross street.  I became aware of blackbirds calling back and forth from one yard to the next in a neat square all around me.  First one would call on my left, then he would be answered by another bird down the street, and then another one right across street would answer.  Sometimes I would hear a more distant response from a singer a considerable distance away who wanted to be in on this territory defining conversation.  The call and response went on for the entire two minutes it took me to traverse Blackbird Corner.

Robin Round-up I took another path, one with fewer birds for the next twenty minutes.  But, upon backtracking on my return home, in almost the same spot that I heard the blackbirds earlier, I now heard a cacophony of robins calling from the many bushes that residents use to landscape their yards.  It was a positive cacophony of robins calling, fussing, chirping and generally making a tremendous racket.  I was enveloped 360º in robin sound that was so loud it was disorienting.  The lone bird who thought he was going to cross from one side of the street to the other was promptly chased away with loud squawks by the resident of that patch of worm-filled yard.  Tough luck, Charlie!

Fanfare to Sky and Water It was getting pretty dark by now and the birds were quieting down as they were settling in for the night.  As I crested a hill, the last climb before home, I heard the sudden, deafening eruption of trumpet calls from a large flock of Canadian geese that were coming in to land on the lake a half mile from where I was standing.  It was such a sudden eruption of noise that it ricocheted off the surface of the water like an explosion.  If I hadn’t know what was making that hellacious racket, I might have been afraid that the hounds of hell had been unleashed and the apocalypse was upon us!  Then, just as suddenly as it started, the goose fanfare ceased.  I was startled by how quiet it was and, for the first time, I noticed the soft, all pervasive chirping of crickets and frogs in the grass and trees around me.  What an amazing sound journey I had just experienced.  Who knew that the world of suburbia was such an oasis of bird life and birdsong at dusk every spring evening?