Mobile, Alabama: My New Home Sounds

In my Birmingham sphere, I heard these sounds:

• Wail of the fire engine and EMT truck from the next corner
• Ringing of the bell from the Orthodox Church
• Rumbling of the train on the track on the other side of the highway 
• And always always always the whirring rolling thrumming of the car and truck tires on the highway pavement above me

In my new place in Mobile, it is quieter except for two constants. 

One is the nostalgic, soothing heartbeat of an ordinary, inexpensive, battery-operated wall clock my mother gave me a couple of years ago, which had been hanging on a wall of her petite dining room. 

 

tick   tick   tick   tick   tick   tick   tick   tick   tick   tick

 

And there's another sound, more assertive:

Dock

Donk

Dunk dunk

Dick

DUCK

Dick

Dack duck

That is the drip onto the top of my window air conditioner/heater from the window air conditioner/heater on the floor above me.

My dripped-upon window unit. Mobile, Alabama. September 2021.

Omnipresent.

It's not a bad sound. It's just a never-ending sound. 

Kind of like the constant humming of the white-winged doves in Alamogordo. 

 

Nesting white-winged dove in Alamogordo, New Mexico. March 2013.

As we enter fall, I'm sure the drip will cease as the air conditioner upstairs eventually goes dormant.

Occasionally, a lumbering plane flies low and loud across my horizon. Not anything like the sonic booms of my Alamogordo apartment, but so low and loud - a rumbly loud - that sometimes I wonder if the plane is about to plow into a neighboring building.  None has, yet.

Tucson, AZ: COVID Unfolding, Part 8: Sounds of the Normal

Palapa roof repair, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

On Tuesdays, the lawn care people come, as always. The grumble and whine of a mower and edger, in the recent past, sometimes an irritant, is now a reassurance. Good, I think. These folks still have jobs in this hard time. Good, I think, some normal routines continue.

Every several mornings - early! there is the grunting and groaning of the trash truck. Good, I think. These folks still have jobs. Good, I think, some normal routines continue.

I note the lawn care guys seem well-protected in their gear and also their social distancing. I hope the trash pick-up folks are doing the same.

Trash day, Jefferson City, Missouri. December 2006.

My apartment complex owners have been undertaking roof repairs. Good. Some people still employed. The sounds of their work, reassuring. There's a truck. It emits airful beats, like a ventilator, pumping. For these folks, I worry for their health, as I'm not confident about their care in maintaining a safe distance in their collaborations.

When I hear the whine of police sirens, I don't think of normality. I worry about the cops' exposure to the people they interact with. ... Or the exposure of their detainees' from the police officers. How do you maintain a healthy physical distance in such intimate, tense interactions?


The other night, I heard the whip-whip-whip of a helicopter as it circled someone, something, across the street from my apartment. Whip-whip-whip, it circled, shining its beacon downward. Eventually, it left.

Opelousas: The Casino Hum

The Evangeline Downs Casino is in Opelousas.

I hear tell some of the money from the casino gets earmarked for road maintenance in St. Landry Parish (and Opelousas is in St. Landry Parish), but I'd like to see which roads actually get such attention. The potholes in Opelousas - and even Interstate 49 that runs through St. Landry Parish - are plentiful and vicious.

Evangeline Downs Casino, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.

 But that's not what I'm writing about.


I'm not a gambler, because I figure if I want to piss my money away, it would be more entertaining for me to light a match to it and watch it burn rather than lose it to a whirlybird machine and go into the pockets of ...who, exactly? Somebody who doesn't need any more of it, I'm quite sure. On the other hand, I guess burning my money won't create local jobs.

But that isn't what I'm writing about, either.

No, it's about the hum. I go to the casino to listen to music at Zydeco's, the smoky circular bar, or to the Friday Fais-Do-Do in the Event Center. I walk through the casino with all the machines and I don't always hear it, but I often do - a static hum that ripples the air. Maybe it's like when a choir gets warmed up and sustains the same note for a long time. I think it's a result of many machines singing their songs and, while the machines might have different songs, there are notes that overlap to create a wide, sound-wave swath.

Some day I'll ask one of the casino workers if they hear the hum when they go home, too.

I thought to google on this topic, and incredibly, here is a two-hour 'soundscape' of a casino - sometimes you can hear that hum.

  

Lafayette, Louisiana: Sounds From My Place

In Alamogordo, there were the ubiquitous sound of the doves.

In Lafayette, I hear complicated melodies from birds hoping to hook up for the spring. I don't see the birds usually, as they're in the dense foliage of my surrounding trees. But there's a nonstop conversation of trills and chirps and whistles and squeaks.

I doubt my birds are Baltimore orioles, but the sounds I hear are similar. 

Then there are the trains - some day I must try to count how many go through in a day. Lots. This train track below is less than a mile from my place:

I'm not far from a hospital, so I hear ambulances on occasion.

Squirrels barrel across the roof over my head frequently.

Sounds to Go

Birds, Jefferson City, Missouri

I need to learn how to upload just sounds to the blog. Sometimes it's the sounds and not the visual of a place that make the story.

Like the frogs at Ureki.

Recently, I've come across some good sites to listen to animal sounds.

Xeno-Canto is:

A website dedicated to sharing bird sounds from all over the world. Whether you are a research scientist, a birder, or simply curious about a sound that you heard out your kitchen window, we invite you to listen, download, and explore the bird sound recordings in the collection. But xeno-canto is more than just a collection of recordings. It is also a collaborative project. We invite you to share your own bird recordings, help identify mystery recordings, or share your expertise in the forums. Welcome! 

Soundboard has sounds from the animal kingdom and beyond. When I listen to the mountain lion sounds, it gives me chills.

The Macauley Library: 

...is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings. Our mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts.

As a lagniappe, I also share with you National Geographic's easy-to-use Backyard Bird Identifier.