Word on the Street
While sitting out on the front porch of my parent’s home a small bird with goldern/tan feathers and a yellowish brest landed in the yard. It had a slight fan at the end of its tail feathers and grey/black stripes on top of its wings. Brownish head. 2.5-4″ long. I believe it’s an American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis), commonly called a Yellow finch. Here’s what the bird say:
isittoday, wher whip, isitoday, isittoday, wher whip, isittoday, isittoday, isittoday, wher whip, isittoday, isittoday, wher whip, isittoday, isittoday, wher whip, isittoday, wher whip, isitoday, wher whip, isitoday, wher whip, isitoday, isitoday, wher whip, wher, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, whip, isitoday, wher, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, wher wher…churp, churp, wher whip, isitoday, whip, isitoday, isitoday, isitoday, wher whip, isitoday, isitoday…
Although the call here sounds a bit different (I didn’t have my audio recorder handy), here is a sample from the Cornell Lab of Orinthology of a male Goldfinch song.
Somewhere in the distance several dogs were also conversing.
Bow wow, wow…whelp..yip, bark…wolf, wolf, wolf…ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, arrrrrr, ruff.
What there were commenting on I could only guess. Perhaps the lovely weather–it’s somewhere in the high 60 degrees fahrenheit range, which given the generally warm summer is a nice change of pace. The sky is a clear, crystal blue like the shallow waters in the Caribbean. There is barely a single cloud to be seen all the way to the horizon.
I’m curious how these other companion species make sense of this urban aural landscape punctuated by the sounds of car horns, fire station sirens and tract home construction.
Off in the distance the locusts respond in unison, creating a nearly 360 panoramic effect with their buzzing chorus:
zzzzzzzzz, ZZZZZZZ, ZzzzzZZZZZZzzz
Further off still in the distance comes the mingled sounds of Canadian geese squacking and little league baseball games.
Honk, honk honk, honk, honk. Mingled crowd cheers and shouts. Thwack. More muffled crowd noise.
A deep rumble emerges off to the side as the neighbor revs up his motorcycle–the deep rumble of the exhaust drowning out all other sounds.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, kachunk, RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Another strata of life flits silently around the yard–a small honey bees flits from spot to spot, searching for nectar. A large dragonfly meanders across the yard. A large bumblebee zigs and zags against the wind, navigating around the flowers and shrubs adorning the concrete walkways. A small gnat zips past through my peripheral vision, vanishing as quickly as it appeared.
If you sit still enough you can hear the flap of flags from the front porches of several houses, interspersed by the rhythmic clinking of wind chimes and rain gutter adornments.
A locust lands in the nearby tree. It’s rhythmic buzzing grows from a small zzz into an impressiv crescendo of sound, then abruptly drops off into total silence.
zhur,zhur, zhur, zhur, zhur, zhur, zhur, ZHUR, ZHUR, ZHUR!
A similar song emerges somewhere in the distance shortly after, playing the partner in a call and response song as old as time.
These are the sounds of the suburb on a lazy summer Saturday in Ohio.
