by Mary Padilla
Dawn is accompanied year round by the twitter of song birds awakened by the sun as it rises over the pond. But beyond that constant, every season has a characteristic soundscape. Starting in late afternoon in early spring, what sounds through the woods is the strum of the peepers, the tiny frogs that make their appearance as the first of the wildflowers are popping up. You never see them, but you do hear them, in an intense and high-pitched cacophony that lasts through the night.
In late spring they’re succeeded by the bullfrogs. They become active as the sun begins to fall behind the tops of the trees. Not only can you hear their hoarse croaks as they call back and forth to each other, but there are also frequent audible splashes as they jump off the rocks and partially submerged fallen trees near the shore. There are bigger splatters too, when the turtles rise up from the mud in the bottom of the pond, where they’ve been spending the winter hibernating with the fish and the frogs, in order to thaw out on those logs, only to plop back into the water when their logs get too crowded, and they need to relocate.
The Canada geese return at this time to reclaim sectors of the pond as their territory and to find mates. A lot of honking accompanies these rituals, together with some rather noisy takeoffs and landings. At sunset they all splash down in the open water in the center where they will be safe for the night from their mammalian predators along the shore. The quacking of mallards often comes from the far end of the pond, announcing their presence aurally, before they swim into view. Fish can be heard jumping out of the water throughout the day, but the egrets and ospreys that hunt them from the shallows are silent and still—until they strike. When they lift off into flight, their deep raspy calls belie their lithe appearance.
Many of the animals are out and about most of the year except in the winter, when they estivate, or semi-hibernate. Squirrels skitter noisily through the dried leaves and chitter as they run up and down the tree trunks and branches. Chipmunks dash about the forest floor making their high-pitched calls, too small to rustle the leaf litter. Snakes glide through the fallen leaves as well, but you have to listen very carefully to pick up the slithery sound they make as they pass. Raccoons lumber about, unable to go by without having the sound of their rolling gait attract notice. Rabbits and mice make little sound, but you can hear the calls of their predators the raptors, the screeches of the hawks by day and the hooting of the owls by night, as they hunt them.
Some of the animals show little fear and make their presence loudly known everywhere they go. Notable among these are the snapping turtles, with their armored shells often the size of dinner plates. Their beaks are strong enough to break off the legs of waterfowl swimming in the pond as they drag their squawking prey below the surface to the tumultuous roiling of the encircling water. They leave the pond to lay their eggs on land in the spring and make quite a racket tromping through the woods en route to finding an appropriate spot.
In autumn, if you are quite still, you can actually hear the leaves fall as they land lightly on top of each other when they hit the ground. And in masting years, like the present one, when they are produced in abundance, there is a constant staccato of dropping acorns, like tympani in the background. (Alternating years of feast and famine keep down the populations of chipmunks, squirrels, and deer that consume them.) Even when you are indoors, their impact is inescapable, as it resonates when they hit the wooden roof, which acts as a sounding board. But when you are outside, a sharp retort accompanies their collisions with objects below, one of which was forceful enough to crack the screen of my cell phone in a direct hit.
By late autumn, things quiet down in the forest as the auditory offerings of the animals thin out, and it is then that you notice the din of the insects, resonant waves of surprisingly powerful sound from invisible sources surrounding you on all sides. Resulting from a multitude of differing fixed pitches and synchronized, repetitive rhythms, the acoustic outcome is so intense as to be nearly palpable. Has it been there all summer but drowned out by the competition, or has it ramped up in a last-ditch effort to find a mate and do what needs to be done before the onset of the killing frost?
It seems odd that this extreme reverberation should seem so much louder to you in what would otherwise be silence than the sound of your own breath or heartbeat, but perhaps you just filter those out of your attention. There must be a great many of these tiny creatures out there, or else they must be capable of generating incredible resonance for their size. However they manage it, the soundscape in the woods at the close of the day at the close of fall clearly belongs to the bugs.
In winter, when the snow comes it muffles the sound, though if it has an icy crust, you can sometimes hear the crunch of a hoof breaking though. Occasionally there will be the sharp retort of a branch overladen with ice and snow crashing to the ground. The streams flow silently below the ice. For the most part the signs of life are at their most subtle then, and, aside from the occasional huffing cough of a deer, you can only see, rather than hear, the animals by the tracks they leave behind them in the snow.
Mary Padilla: I write to see what I think.