The Sound Of Time

[Wander]

I had to be up at early 'o' clock today.
And this has got me thinking - the different sounds we associate with the different hours of the day (and night).
So, come on then - pick an hour and tell us which sound you associate with that hour. Let's see if we can put together 24hours of sound.
An aural way of telling the time.

I'll kick off, and get one of the anti-social hours out of the way:

4am - the sound of foxes screaming

Over to you...

 

[Broch]

I'm not sure it's a time - it moves with the seasons - but I love that moment of dwindling light when the day time sounds change to night time. The last croak of the crows roosting overlapped by the first hoot of a tawny. Then there'll be a few moments of total silence before the night time sounds take over.

 

[Toddy]

Just on dusk, and on a still night without the wind moving the trees, no rustling, and then I can just and no more catch the merest glimpse of the flittermice, and then those happy wee cheeps as they forage for the moths along the gables and the treeline outside the side fence.

I go out to empty the kitchen recycle bins sometimes and then I hear the cheeps and know the flittermice are out.

I don't really hear them when it's full dark, just that silent time just as it's coming on. I think they move away further down the woods later on.

 

[TeeDee]

2 am...

Owls doing what Owls do well - Hooting.

 

[JonathanD]

I’m with Toddy on dusk. That transition of sounds from the day time denizens to the night time ones. It’s magic.

 

[oldtimer]

Entre chein et loup as the French say : between dog and wolf. Not a clock time but a definite time of day.

 

[Kadushu]

The magic is punctuated in my garden by the mad clucking of my hens flying onto their perches, or one at least that sounds like it's being murdered every evening!

 

[FerlasDave]

I always know it’s 6:30 when my wife comes in and turns her hair dryer on full blast, waking me up in an instant.

 

[demographic]

Packing up time on a building site is often signalled by the sound of a mixer with a few half bricks and a bucket of water clanking/sloshing about.
Best sound of the day. Abut 16:00.

Less often nowadays cos more sites have the tubs of cement from the readymix companies dropped off.

 

[PoppyD]

I like night time. When everyone has gone home and just the animals noises.

 

[Robson Valley]

I live at the "mature" end of my village street. Very quiet so any additional sounds stand out. Moose, deer, bears and the cats make no sound.

After midnight. Summers at the lake there was always a "night train" slowly grinding it's way up a very long grade from near lake level to prairie plains level, out of the valley.

Same thing now here in McBride. There's a night train after midnight. Typical mile long seacan container freight headed for Chicago. Going slow out of courtesy, that big and steady thrum, thrum of the diesels. It's been uphill all the way from the west coast so we can expect at least 2-3 engines in front and a pair of slaves in the middle. Hypnotic childhood memory. Love every one of them.

 

[Toddy]

Church bells.
The Kirk in the village dates back into the mists of time. It was an old pagan site, and then Christianity became the fashion. By the medieval the local nobility had a chapel built and funded it so that the monks would pray for the souls of their family for eternity.
That chapel is now the back of the Kirk, and bells have rung on that site for over a thousand years. The present course isn't that old, but they chime every hour, well they did until new flats were built and the incomers complained about the noise during the night.
Thing is though, those of use who lived in the village for so long were used to bells, and we couldn't sleep properly when they were silenced at night.

Now, they ring them at the New Year, and we open the door just before midnight to hear The Bells.

Where I live now is at the edge of that village and the burn beside our garden is the parish divide to the next village along.
Sunday mornings I can hear the cracked bell in the kirk half way down the Main Street, the ones in the old Kirk at the Cross, and the ones in our village too.

That must be a familiar sound right across the UK.
It's Sunday.

 

[JonathanD]

Old church bells on Sunday. Oh yes.