I forget about sound. I’m always too drawn into the sound in my head or the music or audiobook in my ears that I forget to use them to hear what is around me. This was most striking this morning when I heard the beautiful and moving birdsong. Perfect, and a lovely still morning to enjoy it in. It’s not always like that; it usually isn’t.
Yesterday when out in a field we tried a little game to hear things at different levels. There was a bird close by, we could hear that well over to the right somewhere but it remained invisible. There was some kids in the football pitch a little further over, not too loud actually but still there. Further on, taking over for now, a car goes past on the main road, but in the distance, on the edges of our hearing, M notices it. Like a quack she says and does an impression of the soon incoming formation of geese I heard a while ago and was hoping she’d pick up on. They’re still a way off but getting closer. Then we spot them and they fly by us in their distinctive pattern. Like a triangle she says, like an arrow I reply. We watch them disappear over the trees and houses, gurgling and gawking and honking their way to join the hundreds of others no doubt on the field a mile or two south.