Day and night, this area abounds with sounds of all sizes, shapes and axiological attributes, from burgeoning private-jet traffic and manic leaf-blowing to cheerful spring peepers and intimate mourning dove plaints, and from unsubtle thunder to the liminal whisper of careful footsteps in soft snow.
The howl of coyote packs—terrifying to our forebears and still alarming to caretakers of outdoor pets and small children—is for most of us a charming reminder of Western films and a hopeful sign that the largest host to Ixodes scapularis and most aggressive predator of yew and rhododendron may be brought under control without human intervention. The shriek of a hawk, rousing prey from cover, for us gives convenient direction to follow its high spirals. The scariest noises, generally, tend to be the loud, the infrequent and irregular, and the unidentifiable. (One family, new to our suburbs, asked some former housemates about the moose dwelling in a South Lincoln swamp. Said housemates, puzzled but polite, gently explained that this is not moose territory, and asked for an imitation of the sound that inspired the query. The newcomers were chagrined that another neighbor had so duped them with the aid of a few bullfrogs.)
Particularly startling to the uninitiated (or rudely awakened) is the banshee scream of fighting raccoons. At least coyote packs sound intentional, focused and rational. The wrathful raccoon is a berserker, as three large and athletic young men proved a few years back coming home bloody after a sporting evening corraling one into a cardboard box just for the challenge. Another awe-inspiring sound is the groaning of sheet ice under wind-induced pressure differentials. Farrar Pond displays this phenomenon particularly well; its narrow length, high sides and near-alignment with prevailing westerlies create a strong wind-tunnel effect. Hearing (and feeling) this when far from shore reminds one that even a shallow pond is dangerous given freezing water, a sucking-mud bottom and limited cellular reception. But that kind of heaving and cracking really poses little risk to ice-walkers, at least until near the time of spring break-up.
Among the loudest biogenic sounds one is likely to hear inside a house comes, surprisingly, from this tiny and exceptionally tame jewel, our native gray treefrog:
Digital image with Hyla versicolor and Albizia julibrissin
For reasons of its own, this rugose beauty prefers to lurk in the crevices of partly open windows. At an otherwise quiet moment, it will let loose an extended, ululating shriek of such raucous intensity as to chill the bones. At close range it can outperform the klaxon that, from high on Bedford Road, once dispatched Lincoln’s volunteer fire department.
And yet, each of these emissions is self-evidently of a natural character, hence more intriguing than concerning—compared, say, to the hiss of steam from a rusting-through radiator, the crash of a baseball-catching window or the burnt-toast call of a smoke alarm. And sometimes the strangest noises come from the intersection of nature and technology.
In this time of avian mating activity, an exceptionally loud, metallic banging seemed to indicate yet another downy or hairy woodpecker smashing expensive holes in house-siding as both visual and auditory territory marker. But repeated inspections showed neither new holes nor a maker of same. And woodpeckers tend to peck wood, by preference. After a few days, the culprit was revealed as another member of the same family, capitalizing on new technology.
The yellow-shafted flicker is welcome for its beauty and its helpful function in aerating lawns. Though feeding primarily on bugs in soil and snag, it will occasionally dine at a feeder when permitted by the regular clientele:
In this case, a male (note the black moustache) had discovered that one of two capped chimneys is rarely in use at this time of year (the then-active one in this mid-winter picture),
and taken it as his coign of vantage:
One, seasonally, is OK. If a drum circle gets up, countermeasures may be indicated.