It started at the crack of dawn, usually known as “cover your head with a pillow, can you believe it’s 4 am.” It was beautiful, as if every bird in the vicinity was warming up together, a world class choir about to start. Melodious, fluid, ethereal… fully in tune, trilling scales of bird tweets, flowing notes of feathered performers outside our bedroom window. I was swept away, drifting in a sea of bird song.
Suddenly the beautiful choir was interrupted with discordant, and harsh scratching followed by a irritated meow. Seriously? Boo, it’s 4 stinking am… you are not, I repeat, NOT going outside. Stop scratching the front door.
Some of the feathered performers must have been up a little to late last night, because the beautiful and harmonious choir stopped chirp by chirp. There were a few solo singers, but almost all of them drowned out by the sound of “I’m spoilt, and now it’s 4:30 am let me out, I want to play in the front yard,” kitty noises. I fell asleep after a while. Boo did not, I studiously ignored him.
The birds fell silent as the heat from the sun moved it’s way over the mountain tops. The neighbourhood started waking, and the strident tones of the ever barking dogs from the new neighbours rattled our windows, and shook our breakfast table. The layered sounds of lawnmower, weed wackers, blowers, riding mowers continued unabated all day. There was no escaping the noise. Motorcycle engines roaring past, stopping and starting, clouds of noxious fumes spit from their exhaust. It made it hard to hear the birds… as the dogs barked into the night, the sky darkened, and one by one the lawnmowers having disturbed any sense of rural countryside quiet happily rolled themselves into the garage until another peaceful day came around that needed to be disrupted.
A choir of cacophony… welcome to the country. And as the sky slowly folded itself into a ball of orange fire, the birds hidden all day in the intense heat, started to sing… the real choir warming up once again.