My quiet morning walk on the rail trail was interrupted by the blasting shrill alarm from a business on the other side of the woods to my right, then to my left an unmistakable bird call imitating perfectly the alarm.
A few years ago, an alert observer in London noticed that a blackbird was making ambulance and other sounds from the traffic in his neighborhood. Anthrophony intruding on biophony
Biophony is the symphony of animals in their environment, the name coined by Bernie Krause who has spent his life studying the sounds of birds in their natural habitats. He observed that the calls from birds and animals are orchestrated like the different instruments in an orchestra. Their frequency, tone and rhythm
are not random. (Dawn Stover, The Best Science and Nature Writing 2010).
That evening, John and James were spending the night with me. I could hear James crying a little at bedtime. Boofa joined him with the same mournful cry.
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