You are used to what you are used to. So, when I announced my intention to keep chickens this caused some worries, but soon the sound of poultry became ‘what we are used to’ and therefore not just acceptable, but welcome. Even Chouchou the rooster is welcome if he isn’t full throttle right in your face. At night he lives in a shed with some noise-reducing insulation. Two situations cause a right-royal carry-on and that’s 1. the laying of an egg, and 2. an intruder in the garden. Since I’m unable to tell which it is I tend to respond to both. Lucy, my dog, responds to things I haven’t heard, which can be inconvenient in the middle of the night, but, hey, it’s not every night so we can live with that. Twenty years ago I invited the children of friends to stay overnight and they were very excited until I put them to bed in a darkened room. Then, because they were used to the noises of a busy housing estate and not the ‘middle-of-the-country’ noises, they were scared. A lot of silence and then a rustle- eek, what’s that?
Dawn chorus. This still exists. Those of you who remember it from childhood and are missing it are welcome to visit me. Only a small charge for an overnight in the caravan and dawn chorus provided free. It’s because we have 1. lots of trees and untidy scrubby land all around our property, 2. an organically-run garden, 3. a bird table. It is less noisy in summer and it depends on the weather too, but I can assure you we still have some birds and they are still singing.
The children never asked to stay again. To be fair, I, too, was unsettled by some of the country noises when I first arrived. One which chilled me to the marrow was a loud rustling on a dark autumn night as I gave the dog his last walk along the lane. It turned out to be a horse. Slightly less noisy rustling, but repetetive, is a blackbird scuffling up the leaves looking for grubs. The pigeons here, are not ‘flying rats’, but wood pigeons, who arrive at most in pairs, never in noisy, smelly flocks, and roost in trees, not on rooftops or window ledges. They really are a different bird to the town pigeons. Only the rats are the same. Well, that’s a subject we’ll leave, if you don’t mind. That does cause some domestic strife chez Heather. Best let sleeping dogs lie.
pedalboats 