{"id":8161,"date":"2019-09-04T06:58:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T10:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8161"},"modified":"2019-10-21T08:03:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T12:03:03","slug":"the-music-of-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8161","title":{"rendered":"The Music of the Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sleeping with the windows open to catch the late-summer breezes is one of life\u2019s pure pleasures. But here lately, we\u2019ve been catching more than cool air\u2014the night noises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A screech owl has made itself heard several times, and I was able to identify its strange cry from audio clips posted on the excellent website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently they make several sounds, but the one in the trees outside our house went for the whinny. When I heard that<\/em> in the middle of the night, I wasn\u2019t sure whether it was a bird or some other kind of critter. Very distinctive. We\u2019ve not seen the screech owl. The Cornell Lab photos show the superb camouflage of these robin-sized owls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a story I\u2019m writing I wanted to say something about the nighttime insects that keep up that steady late-summer buzz. Like a lot of people, I lumped those nocturnal music-makers in with the cicadas. No. Back in 2015, NPR did a nice piece<\/a> on \u201ctelling crickets, cicadas, and katydids apart.\u201d Cicadas are active in the daytime, I learned. Those night insects are tree crickets and katydids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was doubtful, thinking of the dark brown and black crickets that make individual chirps and like to hide in some obscure place and drive you nuts with their ventriloquism. Tree crickets are pale green and look like skinny grasshoppers. I\u2019ve seen them, but I never realized they were serenading me nightly. When there are a lot of them, you get that constant sound. NPR has the sound clips to prove it! Or, listen to this<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when to expect the steamroller of cicada noise? A few states will have broods of 13- or 17-year locusts next year, but for the eastern third of the country, 2021 will be amazing, when Brood X (ten) emerges. When and where<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren Resized and cropped for this use, under this <\/em>creative commons license<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sleeping with the windows open to catch the late-summer breezes is one of life\u2019s pure pleasures. But here lately, we\u2019ve been catching more than cool air\u2014the night noises. A screech owl has made itself heard several times, and I was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Music of the Night - what's making all that racket outside? The bird and bug serenade.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-life","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Screech-Owl.jpg?fit=392%2C353&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-27D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8163,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions\/8163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}