3:56 Point of order: The tornado siren actually indicates that Mom and the kids should go down to the basement, while Dad goes to whichever room has the best view of the oncoming storm and mutters that it isn't that bad until a cow smashes into the window, at which point he should rush downstairs and say "Its really picking up out there!"
Yep pretty much. Had our first tornado warning earlier this year, and the dads stood at the window while the moms and kids went and freaked out in the closet.
That sums it up pretty well. The man of the house will be on tornado watch during storms while everyone else runs for cover. When a man says "oh sheet, here it comes" you know things have turned for the worse. 😆
I watched a video recently of a blind British girl who was visiting America. She was absolutely thrilled with the crosswalk designs as they allowed her to safely cross the road and know how much time she had to cross. She said that the crosswalks in the UK aren’t nearly as helpful. So as annoying as the sound is to us sighted people, just remember they’re there to give blind people more independence and safety.
The sound of crickets might be relaxing when you're out in the country, but having one inside your house making that sound can drive you bonkers. The noise becomes so pervasive that they're difficult to find.
A field of crickets outside can be quite pleasant to listen to when falling asleep - a single cricket in your laundry vent chirping all night, not so much.
Yeah, a cricket in the house is hell. As soon as you get near them, they stop chirping so you can never find them. I found that spraying apple cider vinegar around the area where you think the cricket got in does the trick. It's not that bad of smell and it fades quickly (or you just get used to it I suppose).
I find the sound of a cricket in the house to be soothing. My grandfather always said it was a sign of good luck. And then later when I was an adult, I had tarantulas for pets so I always had a tank of feeder crickets.
I have successfully captured and release around 50 crickets since I got my cat. He find s them and wears them out until the cricket is just praying for death. I'm able to pick them up and put them back outside. But before the cat - they would drive me crazy if they got in the house as I could never find or catch them. Good kitty also caught a few lizards. Yikes!
Anyone who enjoys the sounds of crickets in the evening should visit an area with spring peepers (a tiny frog species here in the US). For many Americans, spring peepers interrupted by the croak of a bullfrog and light rain is a soothing melody that conjures memories of warm summer evenings sleeping with your windows open.
I had to look up what spring peepers sound like because I've never heard of them before (I'm from Colorado) It reminds me a lot of the coqui frogs that sing in Hawaii year round. When I first lived there it took some getting used to, but now I'm on the mainland again I occasionally look up youtube videos of them singing to help me sleep.
@@cynthiagilmore7024 if I ever get out to Hawaii, I look forward to hearing them. I love frogs. Probably from growing up listening to em I hope you get to visit the East Coast and hear em for yourself. It really is an all encompassing experience to chill in a campsite listening to it
I live in central CA and was surprised to hear spring peepers here, too. Didn’t hear them in NYC growing up (😂😂), but did in NJ in my later teen years. It’s a wonderful thing to hear!
My house in Massachusetts is situated across the street from a bog and I love to hear the peepers every year. I grew up in Pennsylvania and never heard them until I moved here.
It's going to sound weird, but living up in the mountains, one of the sounds I've grown to enjoy is the sound of falling snow. When there's just a light snow falling with little to no wind, you can hear it hit the snow on the ground, the trees, and whatever else. It is incredibly peaceful.
I live on the side of a mountain in Pennsylvania. The sound of it snowing is amazing. I love opening the window, having a fire blazing and snuggling under a blanket. It is simply the best.
One sound I never heard until I moved to the mountains was a soft rain falling on hundreds of thousands of leaves. There's nothing quite like it. Loud and yet soothing.
I grew up in the rural northern Midwest surrounded by woodlands. One of the FIRST things I noticed when I moved to the city was how much more "flat" and bleak rainfall sounded.
I lived in Japan for a few years and I remember very clearly that the bird sounds were different. At first, it surprised me, but I quickly realized "duh, there's different species here." I actually started to miss the Ohio bird sounds because I think they're more melodic and Japanese birds kind of sound like squeaker toys for dogs.
@@arbiterbleeds2761 No but I live in an urbanized prairie area and they are woodland birds. So they only pass through my neighborhood on migration. If I went to where there was more woodland, maybe I would find more of them! I could hop in a car and go on a robin hunt one of these days, which is funny because when I was learning to identify birds in Ohio there were so many robins I had to learn to ignore them!
I moved from the American South, full of birdsong and trillions of insects in its sound, to Alaska. The silence of an Alaskan winter outside is so unsettling that ones ears can eventually become sensitive enough to hear the sound of snowfall. It was spooky for me but sort of peaceful. But then I realized it was -21F and I needed to keep walking.
I live in NYC so there is always constant background noise. When I was in Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains and lost power the silence kept me up all night. I felt like shouting out my window, "WILL SOMEBODY START MAKE NOISE!!! I CAN'T SLEEP WITH ALL THIS SILENCE!!!" Then I started hearing off in the distance the sound of a motor. I thought it was a work crew trying to restore power. I was told everyone hears that and nobody know where it comes from. During the lockdowns here it got unnaturally silent in the city and I heard the same sound. There have been reports of sounds like this as far back as when the first settlers set foot here. Even the natives said they always hear it. The planet is making noise and there has never been an explanation to what is causing it.
I grew up in Illinois and Indiana, I'm surprised you didn't mention cicadas! Also an insect that makes a loud (yet comforting) noise. I didn't realize that wasn't common until my Irish neighbor from Dublin reflected on when she moved here about how "the trees were screaming" hahahah it's my favorite sound in summer.
I came into the comments to bring this up. I moved to Louisiana as a lad and I remember just one day becoming aware that the entire forest around me was thrumming and hissing with this unnatural noise that came from every direction at once and never seemed to end. It was frankly a little freaky at the time.
I grew up in the midwest, and when I moved to south Florida, the thing that suprised me the most was how much I missed hearing songbirds. Floridian birds are all exotic-looking, but they sure don't sing purty.
First time there I was next to a ritzy golf course and a long this course was a sanctuary. I swear when the sun went down the pterodactyls and velociraptors come out. Those things make some crazy sound's.
2:08 in the US it’s actually become somewhat nostalgia inducing for people around my age (I’m 30) to hear a mourning dove call. Somehow, we all had the collective experience of hearing the bird, not knowing what it was, but having it ingrained as a distinctive sound of our childhood.
They are all around my house, they make horrible nests in my eaves that their eggs fall through. Mourning Doves are lazy birds, a couple of sticks shoved together and it’s home. They do have a lovely call. As a kid I thought they were owls! We also have lots of crows, not such a pretty call but they don’t squawk much, they line up on wires, staring at you. I’m older, but I used to hear frogs nightly each summer, a very pretty sound. Back in the safer days we’d sleep with windows open, listening to frogs and crickets. They are gone now, or at least, are not in my area. I’m back in the same city but I’m 45 minutes from where I used to live as a kid.
I'm in my 30s and it's very nostalgic to me, but my mom would always point out that it was a mourning dove (and that's what I think about every time I hear it, my mom :D)
I'm 70, and right up until the past 3 years or so, I thot they were owls! I never could lay eyes on who was actually making those sounds. (Pun not intended, but now that I think about it, it's kinda cool... who who.)
As a kid, two of my favorite nighttime sounds were bull frogs croaking and the howl of coyotes. Of coarse there were crickets but it was always unnerving when they would all stop chirping at the same time. My imagination would conjure up all manner of monsters ambling about in the dark.
Grew up in the country with the frogs and the crickets and with the windows open the noise was quite intense on warm nights - probably close to the volume of a push lawn mower (~74 dB) and more like millions of them out of time like a huge crowd talking. Oh yeah and when it gets quiet you wonder how big is the potential storm that might be coming as a sudden shift to a cooler breeze than 15 minutes ago wafts through the windows. Don’t forget about winter when the lake freezing and cracking in the cold nights rattling the pictures on the walls. 🤷♂️ all pretty normal country living in the upper Midwest.
Locally the tornado sirens are tested at 11 a.m. every Friday morning. Years ago when I was attending a local university we had a student from Britain, and one Friday morning she got to hear the tornado siren for the first time. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide, and she looked very confused why we didn't seem concerned.
My grandmother was in a tornado and said it sounded like a freight train. So, when I heard a freight train one night at 1:10 a.m. and didn't live by any train tracks, I knew it was a tornado. By the time you hear it, you have only seconds to get downstairs before things begin hitting your house. And, yes, I kept telling my husband to get down and he kept running around doing I don't know what until we both smelled fresh pine where trees were now through our back glass doors. I found it strange for a disaster to have such a nice smell as fresh pine trees. Which brings me to Britian. I visited there in the late 80s and I remember the smell. It actually had a smell which I thought was interesting. It wasn't a bad smell. They had these sodas you could buy that were grapefruit flavored. And, the smell was like those sodas. And, I remember these black and white dogs running around and everyone seem to have the same dog which I very mistaking thought was a mutt. I had no idea they were the beloved border collies that herd sheep, very much a pure bred and smart dog. And, I remember the Brits were very nice and would tell us that they don't like Americans, but they liked us. I felt special to be liked by the Brits. They asked if I lived near Hollywood or Disney World. I don't think they knew the US was at least 3000 miles across, but that's Ok. I was most impressed that they kept their country so beautiful. There were no ugly strip malls and tacky signs. I hope it's still that way. We had a jolly ole time and I would go back to visit anytime.
@@Flyboy207 They were all over the place back then. But, that's been years ago. I hope they are still that popular. As you well know, they are one of the smartest dogs.
My granny's house was next to frieght tracks and we all slept right through a tornado the night after thanksgiving one year, except my mom who woke up briefly when a door blew gently shut, just awake long enough to think "huh that train sounds weird" and roll over. Killed 7 people and pulled all our christmas lights down without unplugging them, because tornados are extremely weird that way.
Here in Kentucky, and in other states as well in the south, we have these wonderful little frogs called "Spring Peepers." They come out in the spring in almost any available small to large body of fresh water and they sing to attract a mate. For me, it's a wonderful little sound, beginning at dusk and carrying on through the night. As a child, I would fall asleep to them every spring...and I still think of their little song as soothing.
And here in New Jersey and Delaware. I love that sound. I had a pond on my property in when I used to live in Delaware so I got to hear peepers and bullfrogs. It was wonderful.
One year we rented a house with railroad tracks running literally at the end of the backyard. I thought I would _never_ get used to the noise (let alone the way the house swayed!) when the trains went by, but it was just a matter of weeks before I was instead startled into waking up in the middle of the night because one of the freights was late. Oddly enough, I miss hearing trains now.
I lived near some tracks. They were about a quarter mile away. I grew up on a farm with some woods about a quarter mile away in the opposite direction of the tracks. I loved late at night if the train would go by it would blow it's horn and with my window open I could hear the sound bounce off the trees over and over again.
Same here. When I was 7, we lived in a farmhouse that was across the road from the tracks that ran parallel to the road. I would stay up to watch for the trains. Years later, my aunt had a house that was practically next to the tracks. The trains ran every 45 minutes going north.
I went on a little hike in the winter once in the mountains and all the little tree branches were covered with ice. It was windy, and deserted, and the branches covered with ice sounded like dry tinkly wind chimes. That along with the sound of the wind itself was so so beautiful and magical. I'll never forget that.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the routine testing of tornado sirens on sunny days. I grew up in the Midwest, and it seemed like all my peers had a story about a time they panicked and ran home from playing outside before they had the life experience to understand that there was absolutely no chance of a tornado in that beautiful blue sky. I can't imagine what foreigners think the first time they hear that siren and everyone around them just carries on with their utterly normal activities.
We had a tornado warning on a sunny day. It took out a long line of houses in my neighborhood. It went from blue skies and sun to dark clouds and an EF-2 tornado within minutes.
I had something of the experience of "foreigners" when my sister came to visit from California. I'd been living in the Midwest for about 20 years at that point. When the tornado test happened we were just idling in line (in the car) at a Hardee's. She looked at me and said something like, "Are we supposed to DO something?" I couldn't even figure out what she was talking about at first as the test had barely registered in my mind. 🙂 I assured her that it was only a test, but I could tell she was still looking out the windows for a few minutes to be sure. 🙂🙂
@@rayevinn no first Friday for my area at least. Although we had a tornado siren go off the other day but there was no tornado and it wasn’t the first Friday.
I love the ambiance of summer in my state so much. There's nothing like sitting outside at dusk, listening to crickets and cicadas, and watching lightning bugs flash.
It's kind of amazing how much insect noise there is in the summer, it's just there so you don't really give it much mind. But then you go out on a winter's night and realize just how quite it is. At least in the northern county side.
My one son-in-law is British and his first time here was in summer. We were on the deck behind the house and he exclaimed, "What is that sound?!". I didn't know what he was talking about but then he made an imitation and I realized it was the crickets! Apparently not a thing in the north country over in England. We don't even really notice them but they are in fact quite loud and omnipresent here on the east coast in PA. Good video as usual!
@@mikejohnson9118 Yes, Cicadas are out all day and maybe all night in the forested parts of Oklahoma during the summer, and they are always out in force.
Don't know what you're on about. I live in North West England and crickets are definitely a thing here. I used to catch them. We also have grass hoppers.
Crickets can be very loud in PA but absolutely (unfortunately) nothing like the cicadas here in Austin, Tx. where I now live. I remember growing up in PA and hearing a few crickets but here in Texas and much of the Southwest we actually get cicada swarms which are unbelievable until you see one and hear one.
Crickets chirping is INDEED an oddly relaxing sound. It's the one insect sound that I can think of which can actually lull a person to sleep. Try that with a bee buzzing around. Or a chorus of cicadas blasting across the neighborhood. But man, a cacophony of trilling crickets and tree frogs at the right time of year, the occasional owl. .. What a relaxing set of noises to nod off to at night.
Crickets and spring peepers make my tinnitus issues melt away. It's the only time I get any peace from the noise in own ears. Chirpy animals, gotta love em...except when there's just one in the house. I hate that guy.
Mostly the 17 year cicadas here. They're annoying in that they'll fly into _anything,_ but they're not that loud. Usually you'll hear one chorus go for a few minutes, then fade out, after which another chorus answers, then fades out.
Living in the mid-Atlantic region ( Appalachian mountains) the sound of a screaming Bobcat will send you running for your life. Not because you think it's a bobcat trying to attack, but rather a demon or evil entity chasing you wanting to take your soul. It's almost human sounding. Made me cry when I was camping as a child. I thought it was a witch lol.
Hey Laurence, fellow Chicagoan here, and I'm surprised you didn't mention the loud-as-hell cicadas. I checked online, and apparently there's only one kind of cicada in England and it's pretty localized. In contrast, around here they pretty much take over the joint and scream their lungs out. (Yes entomologists, I know they're not literally screaming, it's some kind of muscle attached to a membrane, but you get the gist.)
@StellaMayfair7 Ah yes, cicadas! Especially the years when the 17-year variety hatch. There are so many of them that the sound is otherworldly, like an alien spaceship hovering in the sky.
Mourning doves are sometimes more reliable than my alarm, i love those noisy guys. For bird-watchers (or those curious) the Merlin app is great for identifying new birds!
Same here. My 2nd floor apt has a balcony/deck and I have a bird-bath with a small solar fountain. I have 2 pairs of Mourning Doves that habitually visit. While I'm sitting outside they will walk along the railing 2-3 ft away from me. Their call is so relaxing.
The reason we like white noise is because it's a good substitute for silence. Sometimes you can't get complete silence depending on if you live near a city or who you live with. If you turn off the A/C, then suddenly you can hear cars and neighbors, etc.
I grew up on the Mississippi, the sound of frogs has a very similar tranquil feeling to crickets. Mixing them together with the sound of water and the occasional low hum of a barge is a very peaceful symphony
I grew up in the southeast US where there are cicadas in the summer, and I had never known life without them; they were just one of those things. Apparently, when people move here, it can be terrifying if they don’t already know about cicadas because they make a very loud, not very pretty sound and it seems all around you. One way I heard someone put it once was, “The trees are screaming.” 😆
We have cicadas here in Pennsylvania so I’m not sure it’s just a southeast US thing to hear cicadas in summer. I love the sound of cicadas singing high in the trees.
The cicadas in my area are in a 17-year cycle. I remember previous cycles where I used to live and it was funny how you’d pretty much forget about that sound until it came back and then it would feel like it’d always been there.
I just posted about the cicadas up north. The ones we have are on a 7 year cycle. So once every 7 years for several days it is defining from sunrise to sunset. Then as the cicadas start to go quiet the crickets kick in until sunrise. It is exhausting to my ears. My brother has a place in the Bue Ridge Mountains in VA. In the summer there always was a constant sound of insects but never that loud and nothing close to the cicadas up north.
We moved to Texas in 1974. My Dad was in the Air Force and we had lived all over the world but never in tornado country. My Mother is English and her childhood was WW2 so she had never dealt with Tornados either. The very first time the warning sirens went off she had a panic attack because they sound just like air raid sirens. Mom is 92 now and still feels panicky when the sirens go. 5 years of war and it still affects her all these years later.
that is because it was so visceral for her. ( probably for me too) . total fear of being bombed to death and the drone of the planes or the buzz bombs just before your neighborhood blew t/f up can get indelible impression in anyone's mind.
Yes. I thought about answering his comment about it. I'm old enough to remember being told that the original sirens used for tornado sirens had been WWII surplus. So, that IS what they are. We just didn't have many bombs dropped here.
I'm staggered to learn that UK is bereft of crickets! It really is a lovely sound; wonderful to go to sleep to. They are seasonal where I am (Melbourne, Australia), singing through the warmer half of the year. Currently Spring here, and I'm yet to hear the first cricket for the Summer. As for all those other noises...well, our birds are pretty noisy!! I ADORE them!😍
Made me realize whenever in a movie or TV show when they want to indicate that a joke or innuendo didn't go over well, they might look around surprised & say "crickets", meaning silence/over their heads. I didn't know crickets & cicada weren't universal! Being So Predominate Here. In the USA
We’re not bereft of crickets. You can hear them quite prominently in the countryside at certain times of the year. If you live in the countryside you’ll hear them at night too. Lawrence is from a town in the UK though, so that would explain his not being familiar with the sound of crickets at night.
Thunderstorms sound very different in every geography in the USA. They're a rushing wind, followed by instant downpour in the plains. Echoing thunder with startling lightening flashes, occasional pitter-patter, and an eventual steady rain in valleys / canyons. In wooded areas, a slowly building symphony from a quietening of animals to a rustling of branches and leaves, a quick few spatters of rain upon the canopy, then a rather sudden build up of constant splish-splashing falling from the leaves to the floor, coming to a crescendo in a full, blowing wind with thunder and the crashing of old, dead limbs and trees, and the roar of a river over rapids, falling from the sky. Thunderstorms are awesome in the USA.
Texas has the second loudest thunder in the US, FL the loudest. Really hard to sleep when 60,000 ft toad stranglers are rattling you out of bed...what we call big t-storms
One of my favorite activities is sitting and watching the storms approach across the plains of Kansas. Can see them for miles, watching lightning dance through the thunderheads.
When I came back from Iraq, the silence was deafening. I immediately noticed the lack of noise in my barracks room, and realized just how accustomed I had become to the constant sounds of helicopters and airplanes and rockets flying overhead. It was a very surreal experience, as I had simply expected to sleep well with the newfound quiet.
I got used to fireworks and explosions during the riots in 2020, because my neighborhood had large commercial fireworks exploding from just before sunset to just before sunrise for about 70 nights. Generally civilians aren't surrounded by loud explosions for months straight, so it was definitely a new experience. Besides being annoying, it never felt dangerous. I had to wear earbuds and shooting ear protection to get to a point of being able to sleep. The worst part wasn't how loud it was, so much as how it was never consistent, so it was hard to adjust to. (Different timing, locations from night to night, etc.)
When my daughter came back for her first visit after moving to Saipan.. the noises here bothered her.. to busy. She was use to quite even during the day compared to usa.
Back in 1986 my mother’s oldest sister was visiting from W. Germany. They grew up in Bavaria through WWII. Unfortunately, a tornado warning siren went off and my aunt screamed and ran for the basement but not because of a twister but because of PTSD from air raid sirens. Very sad indeed.
Sad? She and her family would have been content with their "farm in the East" and never given a thought to the screams of the bombed and murdered tens of millions that the farm cost.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 yep, there always that one idiot who blames children who survived in a war zone hiding a Jewish couple in there sub basement. Well, moron, not every German saluted the fatherland and it’s dreadful despot. You miss the point of the anecdote.
My parents are also from Germany, and my mother did not like the monthly tornado sirens they would test precisely because it reminded her of the bombers as a child and having to go to their air raid shelter. I never thought of it as trigger for PTSD until now.
I live in CO. When we have the windows open in spring and fall, you can sometimes hear dozens if not hundreds of coyote voices raising from the open spaces howling and yipping. We live in the suburbs, but they get around here and sometimes in fairly large packs. It’s so haunting and beautiful at the same time. Best background noise to scary movies at Halloween time ever.
My favorite thing I learned about coyote howls is that they can make it sound like there's more coyotes in their pack than are actually there. Still, they have so many kids I believe you when you say hundreds.
@@JaRule6 oh coyotes aren’t scary lol. They’re more scared of you then you are of them. Hell sometimes they’re so ignorant of you even being there they’ll come right up to you and smell you when you’re trying to hunt them lol.
@@black_hand78 They're scary if you have a pet. My relatives in southern CA say that they sometimes hear coyote yipping followed by a scream that stops abruptly, and they'll see "missing cat" posters in the next few days.
An unusual noise I hope never to hear again: In the part of NJ where I grew up we had a lot of a certain species of tree. I think it was called a mock cherry tree because while it produced little while flowers, it didn't produce any fruit... or at least, no edible fruit. Every spring we would see the arrival of tent caterpillars or bag caterpillars. And they had a special preference for this type of tree. So every spring, they would practically strip these trees bare. One spring day I was walking in a dense wooded area that had a high percentage of these mock cherry trees. I heard a faint sound that I couldn't immediately identify. As I stepped closer to one particular tree I realized the sound was the combined munching of all the caterpillars at once. It gives me a shiver now just recalling that noise. It was a noise similar to a gentle rain, but then you realize what it really was.
As a kid, I remember being involved in an effort to try to reduce the "Gypsy Moth" caterpillar (now renamed Spongy Moth) population collecting them in buckets and drowning them. Those caterpillars were decimating the Pine Barrens. It was unnerving to be in a wooded area heavily infested with them. It sounded like you were in a room full of people eating tortilla chips 😂.
I live out in the country, and one fall a friend of ours who lived in a city came up to visit us. It happened to be deer season. I'll never forget his reaction to hearing the sound of a rifle shot echoing through our valley just after dawn. He was so used to the sound of gunshots being followed by sirens, but up here it's just background noise we tune out when that time of year rolls around.
I have to laugh. Have had friends over that were from the city and freaked out when they heard gunshots in my area. I simply listened and told them " yeah, that's Bob down the road. Just his weekly target practice" Hard to explain to people that in my area we don't freak out. Instead we listen to see who it is in case we want to go over and do some shooting with them.
A family member--either my mom or my sister, I don't immediately recall--had to take a safety course for a teaching job. The instructor mentioned that country people are often the slowest to react to a weapon emergency...because we're so used to hearing guns in ordinary situations that it takes us a minute to remember, "Oh, crap, that's not just someone target shooting!"
@@ptmmatssc13 I'm from a particularly high crime neighborhood in a major US city and we hear gunshots so often that we just ignore it. A drive by happens about every three days just down the block at the local drug dealer house.
Around here your neighbors respond If you target practice Someone shoots theirs once...then someone will empty a mag escalating on until someone goes full auto then it gets quite 🤣
I used to go hunting in central Texas and the ranch we leased had caves all over it. One of my favorite memories is sitting in the truck with my dad and getting completely enveloped by bats flying out of the cave behind us. We cranked the windows down just a little and it was magical.
Omg yes! Not many have experienced it. Such a cool sound! We would hike up the hill and sit in the mouth of the cave. Never got hit by a bat, they are insanely good at avoiding objects.
@@billsargent3407 yes, here in Kentucky we have the same problem. Mammoth Cave's bats are at extreme risk. It's heartbreaking because they truly are awe inspiring creatures
Growing up in England I used to watch American TV shows such as Wagon Train and always wondered what the sound was in the background as they sat around the camp eating beans. I never dreamt that I would end up living in the USA and be able to see and hear those creatures that make that crazy noise.
To be clear, I was talking about the crickets! After reading my previous post about the guys in Wagon Train sitting around the camp fire eating beans, someone may have thought that I was talking about something else!
I remember cicadas sounding so annoying to me when I moved from the West coast to Chicagoland. Now I barely notice them lol. Tornado warnings can even be slightly different sounding in other towns so it's actually helpful to hear it the first Tues of the month. It's more freaky to hear it from a distance not on that day....cuz you're left paranoid wondering how close the tornado is to you and if you'll get a soon enough warning lol
Different species of cicadas sound slightly different. Like the 17-year cicadas we had a few years ago in Pennsylvania were way louder than the usual ones
The terrifying buzz of a rattlesnake is drilled into my head as an Arizona resident. Another distinctive sound is the pounding rain and rolling thunder we get in the monsoon season. Seriously we'll get 2 inches of rain in an hour and it will sound like sheets of water are clapping your ceiling.
The rattlesnake sound is so distinctive, and is totally freaky. My daughter says I break tje snakes ear drums, because I always scream, "Snake, back, back, back." and start pushing everyone behind me back to safety.
Grew up in Tucson AZ and let me tell you.....that sound of a rattle will haunt me forever!! I was six and went to jump in the pool with my little floaties on and as soon as I come up I hear the rattle....a Sidewinder had curled up on the water under the diving board!! My grandfather told me I turned into one of those little wind up toys that you see that swim around, our dog jumped in the pool and killed it but to this day I still check under the diving board before jumping in!
@@azdbuk Around my place in Central Arizona I find them 2-3 times a year in my yard. Up in the pines they are much more rare as they usually aren't active year round so the window to stumble into one is smaller.
I grew up on the north coast of California, and the sound of the surf was constant--it sounded like a VERY long train going by. When we moved inland it took me some time to adjust to its absence.
I used to rent a beach front house in Nags Head, NC for a week each year. The sound of the ocean is very hypnotizing. Even though I only heard it for a week out of a year, i got used to it instantly, and I’m sure it lowers my blood pressure.
OMG, yes. A few years back my boyfriend(at the time) and I moved into a house near the train tracks and had two wildly different reactions to night trains. He was not able to sleep through it, but I would wake up to him trying to cover his ears and listen to the familiar horns and clanking and fall right bak to sleep. Lol. it's a good thing we both moved to night shifts after that, because I loved to hear them while I was awake, and he loved that they didn't wake him up.
I thought of the Outer Banks when I read your comment, and it literally sent chills down my spine. Crashing waves in the distance is one of the most wonderful sounds I can think of.
It’s a bit late for them now, but in a lot of the USA, cicadas are a common summer sound source. They are sort of a cross between crickets and tornado (or air raid) sirens. Usually you get sporadic cicadas, and you may hear one to a few at a time, but depending on both where you live and what year in a cicada brood’s prime numbered emergence cycle it is, you may hear hundreds or thousands at once. Thousands of rather large bugs advertising loudly for mates all at once make quite the racket.
If it's during one of the superbrood years, that sound can get intensely loud. I miss it; where I live now doesn't have anywhere near the amount of cicadas that we had growing up in southern Virginia.
these kinds of videos are so interesting to me. i’m from the burbs probably 35-40 minutes out from Chicago so it’s cool seeing things that have been so normal my whole life being so alien to someone else!
The childhood nostalgia sound I always defer to is frogs. I grew up with a freshwater bog 100 feet off the back of our property with a drainage creek between it and a pond across the street. So running water, spring peep frogs, bull frogs, green frogs, and leopard frogs, cicada, and crickets was the soundtrack to my springs and summers. Occasionally I'll come across some media that has the soundscape and I'll time travel back 20 years.
We used to have lots of frogs in the creek near where I live, but I rarely hear them at all anymore. I miss them! Fortunately, crickets are still around, but still fewer than before and not as often. The creek has grown very dry. ☹
I didn't realize how much I'd miss the sound of planes flying overhead at all times of day until I moved out of the Chicago suburbs. Even 30 miles away from O'Hare you can still hear them quietly in the background. I went to a small college town and suddenly the planes were gone and the silence was deafening to me. Still makes me happy to hear them when I visit Chicago.
I can relate! I lived in the Chicago 'burbs for most of my life. When 9/11 stopped air traffic for awhile, we were all feeling the eeriness. Never realized how comforting the sounds were until then. We even lived over an hour from the city -NW burbs. We left the area 9 years ago and no place feels like home anymore. Laurence's videos have quite a few reminders for me. 😊
Yeah, I live in the Philly suburbs and that is a 9/11 memory for sure. It genuinely took me a bit to put my finger on what I wasn’t hearing. And COVID too.
We aren't in a significant flight path anymore so we didn't notice that with covid! I hadn't thought about it. Must have been so eerie. I'm sure so much is different there now.
I love the sound of wind in the trees, sort-of a soft, roaring sigh (I realize those adjectives aren't normally used together). But my favorite tree to listen to is the quaking aspen, a beautiful tree prevalent in the Rocky Mountains. The leaves brush together and make a soft clicking noise, very distinctive.
Moved from the Michigan/Indiana boarder to southish Florida and I didn't quite realize how much of the wind was the trees moving because most of the trees around here don't make the same sounds
I live in Alberta, Canada and I grew up falling asleep to the sound of Boreal Chorus frogs (like a LOT of them) in the summer, and coyotes the rest of the year. When I moved to the city for school, I found that (surprisingly) I missed hearing the coyotes screaming at 3am. But then, when I moved back closer to where I grew up, I was ecstatic when I could hear the coyotes yipping on my first night there. It helped me settle right in to my new home 🐺😊
Strange to say, but living out in the country as I do, gunshots are heard quite regularly. Either just target shooting or one of the many hunting seasons, mainly deer season. Also living here the sounds of jets flying over and occasionally they break the sound barrier and the sonic boom can really startle you and 2am.
Strange to say, but living out in the city as I do, gunshots are heard quite regularly. Either just shooting into the air or ground or, more rarely, other things. Also, the sounds of neighborhood dogs, loud car exhausts or car audio systems. Oh, and Mexican music.
As a kid in New England) I was used to silence. Once I was in the military and in Texas, the heat was insane so I got a small fan to keep me from sweating to death. Over the years I have grown to depend on that white noise. Now with Tinnitus, without the fan not only blowing cool air on me all year around, but it blocks out the ringing in my ears, and the sound of listening to myself breathing.
Crickets, especially in the Eastern US, are just a constant sound, day and night here in my rural area of Michigan, and combine with frogs, toads, and annual cicadas in the Summer. I didn't realize how much of a presence they are until I recorded a video outside, then played it back for editing. I guess that I just tune out the background noise now. When I lived in Los Angeles, the crickets were only a nighttime thing, and their other companion noisemakers were simply not a presence at all. The Winter is very quiet, though. Most of the birds are gone, and the few hearty souls who stay the Winter, or, even more shockingly, choose to spend their Winter in Michigan, while living elsewhere in the Summer, are not nearly as vocal as American robins or Canada geese. and the crickets and cicadas are gone, while the frogs and toads are in (essentially) suspended animation.
Nothing more awe inspiring than a winter afternoon in a pine woods in Michigan. The stillness and the silence is just wonderful. I enjoy my Michigan winters.
After I moved to Florida I had to get used to the little frogs that come out after it rains. As soon as the rain stops the frogs start in and start calling, and it can go on for ages. Not sure if they have those in other states?
Grew up in Arkansas and I sleep the absolute deepest with the background noise of an intense thunderstorm. Living in Colorado now and it’s one of the things I miss most about the South
Whippoorwills, hoot owls, cicadas, the splash of a bass jumping out of the water, and the occasional bobcat were all sounds of my childhood while camping at our place in the Appalachian foothills of Eastern Kentucky on the banks of the Little Sandy River. Thank you, Lawrence, for giving me reason to pause and remember!
Oh man... you just reminded me about whippoorwills. They hang out in the fields at my parents, but I don't live in a place with meadows now. I miss that sound :/
I hear cicadas all the time, when I grew up in Kansas in the 50's they were all around. Now it is just how my brain interperts the ringing sound in my ears.
When we emigrated to Australia, the first day I bought a bird book so we could recognise all these new species and learn their songs. First encounter near a Kookaburra scared the shit out of me - they are very loud and it was four feet over my head. Australian animals aren't as terrified of people as creatures on other continents. We also have blackbirds; why they chose to bring in that annoying warbling nightmare I'll never know. I do miss Cardnials and Bluebirds, I must admit.
I live in Oklahoma, we have so many bird species that I have spent some time learning their sounds and which bird sings what. Cardinals and mockingbirds are my favorite to talk to. I've kept a cardinal talking for almost 10 minutes by mimicking their song and patterns with my whistling, it's really cool. It would be weird not hearing my native birds, lol
It all depends on areas.. I been to places like Costa Rica and Mexico where animals are very much all around. Many parts of America are like that. I have a bird feeder the birds let me put food in it with them all around me. Squirrels too. Then I have the lizards that run on my feet. I've also been all over Europe and pretty much any animal ran and hide immediately. Parts of Brazil animals came right too you, other not so much.
Being from an urban area as a kid, you get used to hearing every transportation mode under the sun and all the other commotion city life brings. Then when my family moved to a rural area, I couldn't fall asleep because their was no noise. Now when I think about it, we moved in February and that's late winter in the northeast so it was just cold and silent. But by summertime, boy that was a different story. Those dormant trees popped to life. All the animals, besides the ones active in the winter, came out. And did the freaking bugs show out. That 1st summer was when the "Gypsy" Moths returned and they were everywhere. In the city, it's just flies, bees, roaches, ants, mosquitoes, you know, normal stuff. When we moved to those woods and mountains, it was another level. I never heard of a Gypsy Moth so this was the 1st interaction and it wasn't very pleasant. But the crickets and frogs in the evening are very soothing. Then to be awakened at 5:00 am everyday by birds and baby birds chirping. That actually got annoying one summer. Also the woodpecker that was trying to remodel my parents home. I can't stay in the city for more than 2 days now. Family and friends ask "You wanna stay?" when I visit and I'm like "Nah I'm good. I gotta get back to the sticks."
I grew up rural east coast, moved to LA. Finally left and refuse to go to any big cities, anxiety and just a weird frustration being there. I love waking up to the little birds and a beautiful sunrise.
I grew up in a relatively hot area next to a river, so every summer I fell asleep listening to frogs. But I think the most prominent background noise that featured heavily in this video (and in everyone's lives) that wasn't mentioned: cars rushing by. So many cars just whizzing by, engines pumping, tires crunching over bits of loose gravel, wind whooshing... no mention of it. It's such a background noise you didn't even think to mention it.
As a kid in Phoenix, every later summer came the piercing sound of the cicadas. I know they also are known to be heard in various parts of the country. It's such a distinctive sound that is so prevalent during that summer that you'd have to be deaf to not notice it. It's a tinnitus-like ringing, but from outside your ears. Funny enough some with tinnitus find listening to cicadas can mask the ringing in their ears and use recordings of the sound therapudicaly.
Definitely don’t hear them in the UK so it was a new sound for me when vacationing in NC and this was the first time I ever saw fireflies. They are so cool and I was tempted to smuggle some back in my suitcase 😆
The cicadas that only come out every 17 years or so happen in the Chicago area, but I don't know that Lawrence has been in the USA long enough to experience that. It feels like some kind of Biblical plague, with so many cicadas that they are laying on the ground like snow and flying at your face sometimes. The sound of them during those years is overwhelming. .Some areas in Illinois have more of them than others. One of their cycles I saw them littering the sidewalks of Elmhurst, Illinois, but about ten miles away in another suburb I saw almost none of them. It depends what kinds of trees you have and how long your ground has gone undisturbed and undeveloped by construction.
An periodical cicada may only come out every so many years (13 to 17 years depending on the species). However, there are annual cicada that come out every 1 to 9 years. I lived in the southern part of Illinois for many years and most years we would hear cicadas and see their empty husks on fences.
Cicadas and crickets are the two sounds that really make me feel relaxed. On another note, Chicago sirens sound like aliens are coming. My local sirens sound like death singing you a lullaby before you get wiped off the map.
Were you around when the cicadas invaded the Ohio Valley in 2007 (I think it was ‘07)? They were quite literally everywhere. And sooo loud. You could not hear the person talking next to you.
I'm surprised cicadas weren't mentioned. It's _the_ sound of summer here in Texas, and I know for a fact that you get them in the upper mid-west too. Cicadas in the afternoon transition into katydids in the evening - when the lightning bugs come out. It's magical. Crickets can be relaxing, until you get one that finds a cup or empty plant pot laying on its side which makes for a very effective resonating chamber to amplify its chirping. I've had a few like that that forced me to track it down outside in the middle of the night because the noise was literally painful.
I've lived in America for 40 years, and never would have thought I've heard anything called "cicades." Maybe a lot of Ameriacns mistake that sound for crickets, and the video guy just lumped them together. I know I would have, and I'm an American, lol... But I've never lived in a place, where I heard either sound near the houses I lived in at the time. Random American suburbs.
@@nauscakes1868 It may be that they are called "locusts" in your area. When I was a kid all of my family called them locusts. It was only later that I found out that they are actually called cicadas. Locusts are actually a type of grasshopper and are a completely different thing. Or maybe you just don't have them where you live. If you did, you would recognize them. Their rattling buzz comes in waves of call-and-response that seems to pulse back and forth from tree to tree all around you.
@@nauscakes1868 I live in the suburbs in Alabama. I'll hear crickets, cave crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs. My basement/garage has cave crickets. They are long jumping and extremely noisy. We have the regular black and brown crickets around here, too. A couple of months ago, we had cicadas being noisy. I almost stepped on one going out my backdoor. The tree frogs are noisiest after it rains. I'll sometimes see them clinging to the trees. Most of the suburbs in Alabama have lots of trees - and I mean lots. Many of the homes, including mine, are surrounded by trees. We get to see lots of insects and birds, spiders, lizards and snakes, etc. I've even had a copperhead snake make its way into my basement/garage (probably looking for crickets) which bit my big dog on the nose a few years back. Those snakes are venomous, but my dog managed to pull through. Thank goodness he's a large breed. My small dog probably would not have made it.
Since we're talking about the sounds we grew up with... I grew up in coastal Central California and one sound that I grew up with was the sea lions barking down on the beach and by the wharf, especially in the early morning. They weren't a year-round presence but when they were out in force you could hear them from quite a distance.
They are loud too. When I have gone to the coast and seen them they get really loud. We never had a bunch of them in SoCal although they are at the harbors sometimes. We were in the coast outside SF once and there was a beach full of them. It was loud.
The standard book series when I was in College for Forestry is the Peterson Field Guides. The books are all blue (makes them easy to recover when dropped) and cover subjects such as insects, birds, fish, trees, plants, wildlife, wildlife tracks and so forth. I referred to by books throughout my career with the US Forest Service.
One of the best stories I ever heard was of a park ranger who was approached by a visitor asking for help identifying a bird. The description wasn't familiar, but he recommended that the man try the area's Peterson guide. The man replied "That won't help; I'm Roger Tory Peterson".
I live about 2 miles from a race track and all summer long, every Friday & Saturday the everpresent background noise of racecars is just there. I actually find it quite soothing in a way.
Katydids in late summer, great-horned owls in midwinter, spring peepers in early spring, cicadas in midsummer. Comforting sounds of the seasons that mark the passage of time.
After moving to Texas, I discovered where the birds fly to in winter. My supermarket's parking lot. Specifically, the bird I am referring to is the Grackle, a large black bird with an even larger call. And then to hear that amplified by several hundred birds is almost deafening.
There's a lot of native grackles in Texas too, they have a good year long population in supermarket parking lots. I don't go to the city very often but I've seen them roosting in the power lines at night, it's impressive seeing those things just absolutely covered by hundreds of birds.
If I remember correctly a lot of the migratory Birds here in Washington a lot of them will go down to Texas and then they'll make their cute little feathery butts further south and then they'll migrate back up and then eventually make their way back into Canada
I love how cardinals sound like little laser guns. One excellent bird ID book is the Sibley Field Guide to Birds. Used it in my ornithology class to great effect
As a military brat I spent the first 25 years of my life living near Air Force bases. The first time I moved to a town that didn't have a base or local airport, it threw me to not hear the roar of plane engines overhead throughout the day. When I moved again and got an apartment right under the landing flight path to an airport, it was strangely soothing. :)
I too live near an airport. Hearing jets everyday and the occasional helicopter is just normal for me. They stopped flying the jets here about 10 years ago or so, but now are bringing them back and in an odd way it’s nice to hear them again. The local news station even interviewed us about it. Since some people in our area aren’t too fond of the sound. I think I enjoy it because it reminds me of my dad. He was a WWII and Korean War Air Force Pilot. He died in 2018, but I knew he kind of like hearing the jets over our house. Plus it brings Al out of business to our town like restaurants, VA clinic, stores, etc with the influx of military people moving here and their families.
I've lived near Luke Air Force Base (our largest fighter training base) for 35 years. I missed the planes when I briefly consulted in Arkansas and Mississippi.
I grew up near a base, then moved near an interstate where I have vehicle traffic making sounds for me. :) even better if there's a train that comes through periodically.
There is a huge and somewhat surprising difference between the nighttime summer sounds I hear in the New York suburb/exurbs compared to the sound I hear in rural coastal Maine Midcoast). The NY exurb nighttime sound is FILLED with the sound of tree frogs and other frogs, insects and mockingbirds and a couple other birds. The sounds in Maine are unbelievably silent--though occasionally disrupted by a fox or fisher screaming.
Oh the noise those fishers make is crazy. When I first moved to Massachusetts from New Jersey, I had never heard of "fisher cats", as they're called here, and the first time I heard one scream in the dead of night in a wooded area I freaked the f out
In some parts of the US the air raid sirens were not repurposed to tornado sirens (because some parts of the US don't get tornados often enough for there to be a regular system), but the sirens were instead repurposed to summon volunteer firefighters. Young Indiana nieces absolutely panicked when they heard the sirens on a beautiful, clear, sunny day in the Finger Lakes!
We had a little refrigerator magnet distributed by the county. While it's been almost 10 years since I've moved out of there, I remember it was something like: Alternating High-Low - Calling emergency responders, no civilian action required Continuous High - Danger requiring evacuation Continuous Low - Danger requiring shelter-in-place Along with the AM and FM emergency broadcast frequencies, the short-range local walkie-talkie frequency for reporting flash floods/forest fires/impassable roads, and (in case of a severe earthquake) the address & GPS coordinates of designated safe gathering areas away from power & gas lines or tall trees.
Funny, I’m just 85 miles north of you in Wisconsin and our cross walks are silent. I regularly Journey down to Rush University in Chicago, and have never noticed the noise at crosswalks. Next appointment I’m going to have to try them out!!!
I can't believe you didn't mention the sound of cicadas! I love that sound and wait to hear the first buzz of a cicada every summer. I know many areas of the country either don't have them or only get the 17-year-cycle species, but we have them every summer in Indiana.
Here in Virginia, we get cicadas about every 17 years, but in some areas not as bad, we now live in eastern Va. but we used to live near the Blue Ridge Mountains where they were everywhere, they were so disgusting looking, totally grossed me out.
In NE Ohio we get both of them, the every year and 17 year ones. I hate them when they're close but distant ones are tolerable. During our last 17 year cycle they were DEAFENING.
Oddly, the sounds I heard in childhood are rare for the USA and most of the world, and I was raised on a typical small US city. I fell asleep every single night to the roaring and huffing of African lions and peacocks cawing. I grew up 1/2 mile from the zoo, and since traffic noise wasn't near enough to drown it out I only heard the lions. The peacocks belonged to our next door neighbor, and the zoo, and they are very loud. Now in my 70s, and living in a different Colorado small town there are three major differences in sounds: 1. The local tourist train is pulled by an antique steam locomotive, so from 9am to 9pm the steam whistles are about every 5 minutes. 2. It's a small tourist town, so not much traffic noise, and very seldom sirens or even car alarms. 3. Our town has a herd of very tame but free roaming donkeys, so it is common to hear a dozen donkeys braying right outside your window.
Small world, my son volunteers at a tourist train in NJ. He was just telling me of an older member who is out in CO for a long visit & joined a narrow gauge group.
I live along the San Francisco Bay and you can often hear the foghorns, I’m sure any costal region can relate to this but with so much of the US being inland it’s strange to be so far from the ocean whenever I visit other places
@@Alex_Plante I was just going to say the same... brought a nice memory of my childhood back! First thing I noticed missing when I moved "inland" was the sound of that fog horn...
We moved from the Hill Country of Texas to the piney woods of Texas and were amazed at the tree frogs calling in the night, such a lovely sound! Still have coyotes, owls, birds of prey and ducks flying overhead at autumn, all great sounds, don't miss the mountain lions screaming like they did in central Texas, that always brings shivers of fear...
Right? I heard one right outside my window the first year I moved here. I had no idea what it was, but it was horrifying! Thank goodness it was just that one time.
I've live in SE Arkansas near where bayou Bartholomew ends and the southern farming fields never stop as they go towards Mississippi. Can someone tell me how to turn off my tree frogs in the summer because they are LOUD at night. I lived in South Texas for 3 years in high school and it was so nice to not be deafened by frogs and millions of cicadas at night omg
I live in the Hill Country and living next to a river we hear frogs ALL the time! Same with foxes and sometimes those cats. I absolutely love the sound of wooded areas in Texas, I don't think I could live anywhere else.
I live in Southern California near a bird sanctuary. We get people from all over the world coming to see the birds. My parents made friends with some of them. One photographer from England took pictures of the birds and sent my mom and grandmother beautiful prints he had taken. It is their favorite art.
My sister in CO lives at 6,000 ft. elevation. She also doesn't have crickets, but when we speak by phone, she always comments that she can hear our crickets here in VA and she loves them!
Probably not common in many parts of the states, but there are some places that have a lot of trains due to industrial cities/states. I lived very close to trains for the better part of my life and loved hearing them chugging on by.
Tree frogs after a drenching rain, or crickets in a dry heat (millions of both) .. all in chorus can be be deafeningly loud yet subtly relaxing. They all go silent in unison .. bringing an eerie hush, like a classical movement. Then strike up the band .. they all resume their deafening cacophony. God's music .. indeed. Relax .. enjoy!
When our kids were little we had a tree frog climb up the kid's window singing just as loud as it could. Told my son he was singing him the song of his people. We use to not have tree frogs then got a pool & they took up residency in our willow tree & took nightly swims in our pool.
@@dawngw26 Oh definitely! I was a sailor for 2 years and now I can't leave it, moved house to a small seaside town on the coast of Wales be closer to the sea 😛
It totally blew my mind when I learned that the British didn't have crickets. It's just an ever-present part of the soundscape here during certain parts of the year.
West coast doesn't have 'em either. Must be the wet and overcast weather that they just can't thrive in. Going from no crickets to crickets is a very weird experience.
When Americans started using the word "crickets" to describe quiet or no response ex. like "Anyone home?". Crickets. Sort of like "radio silence" 😶, a lot of people in the world must have gone "huh?"
I live in a rural area of Kentucky and I hear coyotes quite a bit in the evenings. Then in the Spring the wild turkey hens start yelping and the toms start gobbling during mating season. I love where I live!
Where I live (Midwest) the tornado sirens are tested the first Wednesday of every month. So 99% of the time, I will hear an ominous siren in the distance and think “oh, it’s Wednesday”.
@@adriannahelstad799 in MN it goes off first Wednesday of each month at 1pm, but it can vary from county to county, as they control when it sounds. from a brief internet search it is the first Tuesday in the quad cities area
In North St. Paul, MN they blast theirs at noon each day. I think just from M-F, but now I can't be sure because I tune it out so often. It's just to let residents know it's noon as far as I can tell.
The winter nights in the Midwest are usually pretty silent, but sometimes you'll hear a great horned owl. It's very eerie. They like to nest in January in order to get the drop on the other birds.
You pointed out some good ones for your area. Here in Texas, I think the most notable are the common cicadas. At least where I live, they're quite noisy. And when I visit a more rural area I can also hear coyotes at dusk/dawn sometimes (only when people haven't been noisy enough to scare them off--and I'm not in danger when I hear them, don't worry!).
theres some sort of insect in the desert in california. might be a cicada. i can tell when i walk by the tree in the summer, it sounds like electricity in a way. its very wierd
I think there are about 100 different species of cicadas. Each of them comes out at a different time interval. Some of them emerge every year, some of them every 4 years, some of them 7 or 8 years, and there is one species that comes out every 17 years. In any given year there are always 2 or more species present. They don't bite or sting, and are actually very rarely seen, I think they spend most of their time in trees.
I hate cicadas. Most people pronounce the word wrong (they say si-cay-duh, which is wrong), and they scream at you so loud when you get near their tree. I love screaming back at them to shut up. They usually listen.
Ooooh, Laurence, did you know that crickets chirp slower as the weather cools? In the spring & fall they chirp much slower than in the summer. You’re welcome, from SW Ohio 😁
Only a week ago, after watching a famous military person on a show, I realized that my habit of going to bed with a fan on was not just to keep cool but to cover up my tinnitus. It never occurred to me that was the reason for always having some white noise to sleep by.
I sleep with s fan for the same reason. Some nights I have to play something boring on my phone and pop in my ear buds. The one regret I have in life is not wearing ear protection at car races and concerts.
Oh, and one really amazing sound that you might hear not terribly far from Chicago is a loon call. It's the state bird of Minnesota, but they sometimes also summer in Wisconsin. When I was a kid, we'd go camping up north almost every summer, and we'd often hear them in the night. It's a mournful, haunting sound when they call to one another, and absolutely distinctive.
The loons. lol One loon call sounds like the wail of a lost soul drifting across the lake. Another loon call sounds like the cackling laugh of a deranged axe murderer. If you are out camping with someone who has never heard a loon before, they will invariably ask, "WHAT was that?" When you tell them, "It is just a bird, Go back to sleep." they will respond, "That is NOT a bird."
YES! First time I heard one was on a middle school camping trip in Northern MN. I didn’t know what it was, so my brain made up all sorts of terrifying creatures (wolves? Werewolves? Yeti?!). Never once did I consider it might be a bird 🤦🏻♀️ they sound creepy af if you don’t know what you’re hearing haha
I grew up in the city of PHX AZ, so road sounds, traffic, and crickets were a thing at night. BUT at 18, almost 30 years ago we moved to the east coast in the country of eastern NC, we had woods to the side and back of our home. This is when i learned about the loud summer song of the tree frogs. I thought i would never sleep again. But now, i can not live without it. Our currwnt home is the first time the woods are farther away, and tree frogs are not such a thing here often. But yes, crickets, tree frogs, owls, and all the critters are a must for me to sleep.
@@padenlisk2447 thankfully not in my area. Maybe those who live by them feel differently, since they know what to do when they hear one (unlike a tornado, when you have no control over what will happen)
Coal barges along the Ohio River. It's actually quite a reassuring sound; when the pandemic hit we didn't hear the for weeks or the cargo trains across the river. When the sounds started again it was a relief that things were getting back to normal.
'Bird book', look for the books from 'The Audubon Society'. I believe there are huge volumes that relate to specific regions of the U.S. (NW, SW, Central, Eastern, etc.). Being in Oregon and having lived in Montana, Missouri and British Columbia, have 2 such books (NW & Central). They're comprehensive and cover everything from habitat & migration to food sources to song to the number, color & size of each species' eggs. Pretty much everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask... Kinda like you didn't ask for this 'book' info... 😏
you can get excellent regional books by Roger Tory Peterson, they are smaller, well illustrated, and small enough to carry in a large purse or a backpack.
We lived deep in the woods of Kentucky for 4 years offgrid. Night time was dead silent. Most people don't know what that means. When we moved back to civilization, it was so noisy. Your house hums with electricity, traffic a half mile away, and there is a tone. A steady sinewave tone. My son in law thanked me for pointing it out, because he didn't want to sound crazy for hearing it.
I grew up in a heavily forested area of south Alabama and between the sounds of frogs, crickets, katydids, night birds, and the occasional coyote I would find the night quite loud. I never noticed until I would go home to visit after moving away.
I moved to Georgia from California years ago, I didn’t know how loud summer nights were in the south; frogs, crickets, and katydids, is what you hear. I love it a find it to be rather comforting.
The sounds of summer vaction as a kid in Ohio, The AC running, cicadas, crickets at night, bicycles going by, the bird calls primarily in the morning and evening, the crack of a baseball bat, the music from the ice cream truck, kids playing in the distance. Just good times all-around.
I live just outside a decent sized city, so I have the luxury of living in a "rural" area that is relatively quiet yet can just drive 5 minutes into town. Particularly I live in a wooded area, and my favorite sound ever is the morning doves on a sunny morning. Brings me back to my childhood.
Up here, in Oregon's Hood River Valley, the sound of frost fans is fairly ubiquitous, at least in late winter/early spring when there is a danger of frost damage to the pear and cherry trees. I couldn't find a RUclips video of the fans in action, but they sound like a squadron of old school propellor driven airplanes getting ready to take off.
That took me a couple of seconds, I think you are talking about the "anti-frost" fans. Yes, we don't really use them in Willamette Valley. Though a few times the sprinklers are used, to cover in ice, as it protects fruit flower buds at certain stages.
@@Bedwyr7 Yes, a friend of mine flew helicopters, and did the low slow fly and hover over orchards a couple of years. It was a speedy option for farmers, but less than losing an entire crop.
3:56 Point of order: The tornado siren actually indicates that Mom and the kids should go down to the basement, while Dad goes to whichever room has the best view of the oncoming storm and mutters that it isn't that bad until a cow smashes into the window, at which point he should rush downstairs and say "Its really picking up out there!"
Until a tree fell on the house during hurricane opal.
Yep pretty much. Had our first tornado warning earlier this year, and the dads stood at the window while the moms and kids went and freaked out in the closet.
That sums it up pretty well. The man of the house will be on tornado watch during storms while everyone else runs for cover.
When a man says "oh sheet, here it comes" you know things have turned for the worse. 😆
Typical dad shit, love a drama 😂
"I gotta let you go we got cows!"
I watched a video recently of a blind British girl who was visiting America. She was absolutely thrilled with the crosswalk designs as they allowed her to safely cross the road and know how much time she had to cross. She said that the crosswalks in the UK aren’t nearly as helpful. So as annoying as the sound is to us sighted people, just remember they’re there to give blind people more independence and safety.
Was that Lucy, I think last name Edwards?
@@jamesburton1050 When her hair is strawlike it really gets to her.
@@jamesburton1050 yes I think it was! I stumbled across a video of hers, I think it was a short one
@@Sarah-ic4yu she's such a sweet person!
That British crosswalk alarm sounded like a smoke alarm.
The sound of crickets might be relaxing when you're out in the country, but having one inside your house making that sound can drive you bonkers. The noise becomes so pervasive that they're difficult to find.
A field of crickets outside can be quite pleasant to listen to when falling asleep - a single cricket in your laundry vent chirping all night, not so much.
Yeah, a cricket in the house is hell. As soon as you get near them, they stop chirping so you can never find them. I found that spraying apple cider vinegar around the area where you think the cricket got in does the trick. It's not that bad of smell and it fades quickly (or you just get used to it I suppose).
@@SuzA8110 lol the hell? 😂
I find the sound of a cricket in the house to be soothing. My grandfather always said it was a sign of good luck.
And then later when I was an adult, I had tarantulas for pets so I always had a tank of feeder crickets.
I have successfully captured and release around 50 crickets since I got my cat. He find s them and wears them out until the cricket is just praying for death. I'm able to pick them up and put them back outside. But before the cat - they would drive me crazy if they got in the house as I could never find or catch them. Good kitty also caught a few lizards. Yikes!
Anyone who enjoys the sounds of crickets in the evening should visit an area with spring peepers (a tiny frog species here in the US). For many Americans, spring peepers interrupted by the croak of a bullfrog and light rain is a soothing melody that conjures memories of warm summer evenings sleeping with your windows open.
I had to look up what spring peepers sound like because I've never heard of them before (I'm from Colorado) It reminds me a lot of the coqui frogs that sing in Hawaii year round. When I first lived there it took some getting used to, but now I'm on the mainland again I occasionally look up youtube videos of them singing to help me sleep.
@@cynthiagilmore7024 if I ever get out to Hawaii, I look forward to hearing them. I love frogs. Probably from growing up listening to em
I hope you get to visit the East Coast and hear em for yourself. It really is an all encompassing experience to chill in a campsite listening to it
I live in central CA and was surprised to hear spring peepers here, too. Didn’t hear them in NYC growing up (😂😂), but did in NJ in my later teen years. It’s a wonderful thing to hear!
I live in town now but I used to live in the country and the frogs were always fun. Cicadas in the summer, too.
My house in Massachusetts is situated across the street from a bog and I love to hear the peepers every year. I grew up in Pennsylvania and never heard them until I moved here.
It's going to sound weird, but living up in the mountains, one of the sounds I've grown to enjoy is the sound of falling snow. When there's just a light snow falling with little to no wind, you can hear it hit the snow on the ground, the trees, and whatever else. It is incredibly peaceful.
Then , when it's snowing heavily
It sounds like a giant stomping around
Comin' down in clumps.....gotta love it
Sounds amazing.
Oh wow. There's a lot of snow where I live but I've never heard it. That sounds lovely.
Tis indeed a marvelous sound!
I live on the side of a mountain in Pennsylvania. The sound of it snowing is amazing. I love opening the window, having a fire blazing and snuggling under a blanket. It is simply the best.
One sound I never heard until I moved to the mountains was a soft rain falling on hundreds of thousands of leaves. There's nothing quite like it. Loud and yet soothing.
A gentle roar
A lot of older folks around here talk about rain on a tin roof. I only heard it once or twice, and it was an interesting experience.
It's my favorite white noise when meditating or trying to sleep 😊
I grew up in the rural northern Midwest surrounded by woodlands. One of the FIRST things I noticed when I moved to the city was how much more "flat" and bleak rainfall sounded.
Or wind through a pine forest, very distinctive sound.
Crickets might be a relaxing and almost welcome sound if you're outside. Inside it's one of the most maddening sounds imaginable.
I came down here to say just that.
Are you saying there are crickets inside your house?
@@maiamaiapapaya Not at this time, but it has been known to happen.
Yep! They’re impossible to locate & capture! 😂
@@maiamaiapapaya When I was on the farm, yes. Constantly. Here in town, occasionally.
I lived in Japan for a few years and I remember very clearly that the bird sounds were different. At first, it surprised me, but I quickly realized "duh, there's different species here." I actually started to miss the Ohio bird sounds because I think they're more melodic and Japanese birds kind of sound like squeaker toys for dogs.
I moved from Ohio to Texas and I miss robins. I get excited when they pass through a couple times a year on migration. In Ohio robins were everywhere!
@@lonesparrow we still get them year-round in east texas, do you live in a more arid part?
@@arbiterbleeds2761 No but I live in an urbanized prairie area and they are woodland birds. So they only pass through my neighborhood on migration. If I went to where there was more woodland, maybe I would find more of them! I could hop in a car and go on a robin hunt one of these days, which is funny because when I was learning to identify birds in Ohio there were so many robins I had to learn to ignore them!
😂 you made me chuckle 😂😂
I moved from the American South, full of birdsong and trillions of insects in its sound, to Alaska. The silence of an Alaskan winter outside is so unsettling that ones ears can eventually become sensitive enough to hear the sound of snowfall. It was spooky for me but sort of peaceful. But then I realized it was -21F and I needed to keep walking.
Snow is very muffling also. Even in normally noisy areas, a decent snowfall cuts the sound down immensely.
As a southerner in the summer, the sound if cicadas is the song around here. Such a unique sound to the south in the summer.
I love the sound of snow falling.
Can you hear the 100-zillion trillion Alaskan mosquitoes?
I live in NYC so there is always constant background noise. When I was in Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains and lost power the silence kept me up all night. I felt like shouting out my window, "WILL SOMEBODY START MAKE NOISE!!! I CAN'T SLEEP WITH ALL THIS SILENCE!!!" Then I started hearing off in the distance the sound of a motor. I thought it was a work crew trying to restore power. I was told everyone hears that and nobody know where it comes from. During the lockdowns here it got unnaturally silent in the city and I heard the same sound. There have been reports of sounds like this as far back as when the first settlers set foot here. Even the natives said they always hear it. The planet is making noise and there has never been an explanation to what is causing it.
I grew up in Illinois and Indiana, I'm surprised you didn't mention cicadas! Also an insect that makes a loud (yet comforting) noise. I didn't realize that wasn't common until my Irish neighbor from Dublin reflected on when she moved here about how "the trees were screaming" hahahah it's my favorite sound in summer.
I came into the comments to bring this up. I moved to Louisiana as a lad and I remember just one day becoming aware that the entire forest around me was thrumming and hissing with this unnatural noise that came from every direction at once and never seemed to end. It was frankly a little freaky at the time.
Yep, good ol' Midwest! Cicadas on the hot summer days, katydids at night, and crickets for 3 seasons!
Cicadas are how you know it is high summer in Chicago!
@@catbird7007 - katydids are the best! You van almost understand their language as they talk to each other across the street.
@@fredheyman5434 As long as they stay across the street...from me! Lol. They kinda creep me out, as do most bugs.
I grew up in the midwest, and when I moved to south Florida, the thing that suprised me the most was how much I missed hearing songbirds. Floridian birds are all exotic-looking, but they sure don't sing purty.
I feel sorry for anybody who doesn't know the difference between the songs of a cardinal, a red winged blackbird, and a red throated sparrow.
First time there I was next to a ritzy golf course and a long this course was a sanctuary. I swear when the sun went down the pterodactyls and velociraptors come out. Those things make some crazy sound's.
Haha yes Florida birds always sound angry. Probably because I see them mostly when they're fighting over fish scraps.
@@dennisharrell2236 loons. Loons everywhere
A tree full of blue-jays sounds like 50 car alarms going off at once
2:08 in the US it’s actually become somewhat nostalgia inducing for people around my age (I’m 30) to hear a mourning dove call. Somehow, we all had the collective experience of hearing the bird, not knowing what it was, but having it ingrained as a distinctive sound of our childhood.
It's nostalgia for me and I'm in my 20s. They're not the brightest birds though.
They are all around my house, they make horrible nests in my eaves that their eggs fall through. Mourning Doves are lazy birds, a couple of sticks shoved together and it’s home. They do have a lovely call. As a kid I thought they were owls! We also have lots of crows, not such a pretty call but they don’t squawk much, they line up on wires, staring at you.
I’m older, but I used to hear frogs nightly each summer, a very pretty sound. Back in the safer days we’d sleep with windows open, listening to frogs and crickets. They are gone now, or at least, are not in my area. I’m back in the same city but I’m 45 minutes from where I used to live as a kid.
Its awesome but not when you close a bar and they wake up at 0630😅
I'm in my 30s and it's very nostalgic to me, but my mom would always point out that it was a mourning dove (and that's what I think about every time I hear it, my mom :D)
I'm 70, and right up until the past 3 years or so, I thot they were owls! I never could lay eyes on who was actually making those sounds.
(Pun not intended, but now that I think about it, it's kinda cool... who who.)
As a kid, two of my favorite nighttime sounds were bull frogs croaking and the howl of coyotes. Of coarse there were crickets but it was always unnerving when they would all stop chirping at the same time. My imagination would conjure up all manner of monsters ambling about in the dark.
Yep! That's always a sign! 😆
Hahaha YES! And they know when you are looking for them. They shut up
When crickets suddenly stop, it my be the rain approaching. Or even a storm.
Grew up in the country with the frogs and the crickets and with the windows open the noise was quite intense on warm nights - probably close to the volume of a push lawn mower (~74 dB) and more like millions of them out of time like a huge crowd talking. Oh yeah and when it gets quiet you wonder how big is the potential storm that might be coming as a sudden shift to a cooler breeze than 15 minutes ago wafts through the windows. Don’t forget about winter when the lake freezing and cracking in the cold nights rattling the pictures on the walls. 🤷♂️ all pretty normal country living in the upper Midwest.
gun shots as guns are banned in the Uk the illegitimate monarch doesnt want the revolting peasants to revolt!
Moving from Massachusetts to Texas, I noticed the unearthly sound of cicadas in the summer. It's amazing how loud they can actually get.
Oh yeah. Sadly they're not as promanant as they were when I was a kid here in Colorado.
Cicadas can get up to 100 decibels loud. That's around the same loudness as a motorcycle, lawnmower, or live music concert.
Don't they only come out every 17 years?
@@HailAnts Oh yeah... I feel a bit dumb now.
There are other species of cicadas that come out every summer.
Locally the tornado sirens are tested at 11 a.m. every Friday morning. Years ago when I was attending a local university we had a student from Britain, and one Friday morning she got to hear the tornado siren for the first time. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide, and she looked very confused why we didn't seem concerned.
Wow that almost sounds excessive. In my town (in Missouri) they only test them on the first Monday of the month.
Let's hope there isn't an actual tornado on a Friday at 11am
Same where I live and it’s been that way for decades. Every Friday at 11 AM the siren goes off!
@@amandap7733 Maybe to you it is but to me, I’m fine with it!
@@1998tkhri With cell phones and modern day media alerting’s on bad weather I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem!
My grandmother was in a tornado and said it sounded like a freight train. So, when I heard a freight train one night at 1:10 a.m. and didn't live by any train tracks, I knew it was a tornado. By the time you hear it, you have only seconds to get downstairs before things begin hitting your house. And, yes, I kept telling my husband to get down and he kept running around doing I don't know what until we both smelled fresh pine where trees were now through our back glass doors. I found it strange for a disaster to have such a nice smell as fresh pine trees.
Which brings me to Britian. I visited there in the late 80s and I remember the smell. It actually had a smell which I thought was interesting. It wasn't a bad smell. They had these sodas you could buy that were grapefruit flavored. And, the smell was like those sodas. And, I remember these black and white dogs running around and everyone seem to have the same dog which I very mistaking thought was a mutt. I had no idea they were the beloved border collies that herd sheep, very much a pure bred and smart dog.
And, I remember the Brits were very nice and would tell us that they don't like Americans, but they liked us. I felt special to be liked by the Brits. They asked if I lived near Hollywood or Disney World. I don't think they knew the US was at least 3000 miles across, but that's Ok. I was most impressed that they kept their country so beautiful. There were no ugly strip malls and tacky signs. I hope it's still that way. We had a jolly ole time and I would go back to visit anytime.
I had a Border Collie growing up, if they’re all over England then I might have to go just for that… I miss mine.
@@Flyboy207 They were all over the place back then. But, that's been years ago. I hope they are still that popular. As you well know, they are one of the smartest dogs.
What's wrong with strip malls?
@@gujwdhufjijjpo9740 Plenty, but that's an hours-long rabbit hole of urban design theory.
My granny's house was next to frieght tracks and we all slept right through a tornado the night after thanksgiving one year, except my mom who woke up briefly when a door blew gently shut, just awake long enough to think "huh that train sounds weird" and roll over. Killed 7 people and pulled all our christmas lights down without unplugging them, because tornados are extremely weird that way.
Here in Kentucky, and in other states as well in the south, we have these wonderful little frogs called "Spring Peepers." They come out in the spring in almost any available small to large body of fresh water and they sing to attract a mate. For me, it's a wonderful little sound, beginning at dusk and carrying on through the night. As a child, I would fall asleep to them every spring...and I still think of their little song as soothing.
We have Spring Peepers in NY too. If you live near a place with wetlands or a pond, which I used to. I always loved that sound too.
@@hollybeeme Way up in Ontario as well.
And here in New Jersey and Delaware. I love that sound. I had a pond on my property in when I used to live in Delaware so I got to hear peepers and bullfrogs. It was wonderful.
I am a Kentucky girl born and raised.. I live in Bavaria,Germany now ...I miss them Peepers so much....
@@paulbriggs3072 That is good to know we have talked about moving to Canada one day..
One year we rented a house with railroad tracks running literally at the end of the backyard. I thought I would _never_ get used to the noise (let alone the way the house swayed!) when the trains went by, but it was just a matter of weeks before I was instead startled into waking up in the middle of the night because one of the freights was late. Oddly enough, I miss hearing trains now.
I know what you mean
I lived near some tracks. They were about a quarter mile away. I grew up on a farm with some woods about a quarter mile away in the opposite direction of the tracks. I loved late at night if the train would go by it would blow it's horn and with my window open I could hear the sound bounce off the trees over and over again.
You were quickly trained.
I actually miss them too. There is something strangely soothing about the sounds of the trains as they become familiar and then even expected.
Same here. When I was 7, we lived in a farmhouse that was across the road from the tracks that ran parallel to the road. I would stay up to watch for the trains. Years later, my aunt had a house that was practically next to the tracks. The trains ran every 45 minutes going north.
I went on a little hike in the winter once in the mountains and all the little tree branches were covered with ice. It was windy, and deserted, and the branches covered with ice sounded like dry tinkly wind chimes. That along with the sound of the wind itself was so so beautiful and magical. I'll never forget that.
And then when they explode 💀
This is one of my all time favorite sounds. Or sitting on a lake and hearing the ice expand and crack, not dangerous cracking, the long twonk sound.
I'm from Vermont, and I love those sounds
@@jacquelinej143 This was in Pennsylvania, on the Appalachian trail. Hawk Mountain. It was totally deserted that day which made it even more peaceful.
@@josephg.1.130 You nut! 🙃
I'm surprised you didn't mention the routine testing of tornado sirens on sunny days. I grew up in the Midwest, and it seemed like all my peers had a story about a time they panicked and ran home from playing outside before they had the life experience to understand that there was absolutely no chance of a tornado in that beautiful blue sky. I can't imagine what foreigners think the first time they hear that siren and everyone around them just carries on with their utterly normal activities.
Was it on the first Wednesday of the month for you guys as well?
We had a tornado warning on a sunny day. It took out a long line of houses in my neighborhood. It went from blue skies and sun to dark clouds and an EF-2 tornado within minutes.
I had something of the experience of "foreigners" when my sister came to visit from California. I'd been living in the Midwest for about 20 years at that point. When the tornado test happened we were just idling in line (in the car) at a Hardee's. She looked at me and said something like, "Are we supposed to DO something?" I couldn't even figure out what she was talking about at first as the test had barely registered in my mind. 🙂 I assured her that it was only a test, but I could tell she was still looking out the windows for a few minutes to be sure. 🙂🙂
First Wednesday Of the month at noon.
@@rayevinn no first Friday for my area at least. Although we had a tornado siren go off the other day but there was no tornado and it wasn’t the first Friday.
I love the ambiance of summer in my state so much. There's nothing like sitting outside at dusk, listening to crickets and cicadas, and watching lightning bugs flash.
Yes! Lighting bugs. Not fireflies.
I always loved that about florida when travelling to the states. Falling asleep to the singing of thousands of cricket's by the pool. Bliss
It's kind of amazing how much insect noise there is in the summer, it's just there so you don't really give it much mind. But then you go out on a winter's night and realize just how quite it is. At least in the northern county side.
I had not seen the littel buggers flash for years unti I started driving cross country again. Missed that.
You just described what it's like living here in Eastern nebraska
My one son-in-law is British and his first time here was in summer. We were on the deck behind the house and he exclaimed, "What is that sound?!". I didn't know what he was talking about but then he made an imitation and I realized it was the crickets! Apparently not a thing in the north country over in England. We don't even really notice them but they are in fact quite loud and omnipresent here on the east coast in PA. Good video as usual!
Crickets are one thing...the Cicadas are WHOLE other thing! Especially when they are out in force.
@@mikejohnson9118 Yes, Cicadas are out all day and maybe all night in the forested parts of Oklahoma during the summer, and they are always out in force.
Don't know what you're on about.
I live in North West England and crickets are definitely a thing here.
I used to catch them.
We also have grass hoppers.
Oh how I miss the sound of a rural PA night. No city sounds, only nature sounds, and you can see the Milky Way so clearly
Crickets can be very loud in PA but absolutely (unfortunately) nothing like the cicadas here in Austin, Tx. where I now live. I remember growing up in PA and hearing a few crickets but here in Texas and much of the Southwest we actually get cicada swarms which are unbelievable until you see one and hear one.
Crickets chirping is INDEED an oddly relaxing sound. It's the one insect sound that I can think of which can actually lull a person to sleep. Try that with a bee buzzing around. Or a chorus of cicadas blasting across the neighborhood.
But man, a cacophony of trilling crickets and tree frogs at the right time of year, the occasional owl. .. What a relaxing set of noises to nod off to at night.
Unless ONE cricket gets in your room....
@@ZlothZloth had one in my bathtub of all places, it amplified it by quite a bit
Crickets and spring peepers make my tinnitus issues melt away. It's the only time I get any peace from the noise in own ears. Chirpy animals, gotta love em...except when there's just one in the house. I hate that guy.
Mostly the 17 year cicadas here. They're annoying in that they'll fly into _anything,_ but they're not that loud. Usually you'll hear one chorus go for a few minutes, then fade out, after which another chorus answers, then fades out.
Crickets are ok. A singular cricket is obnoxious 😉
Living in the mid-Atlantic region ( Appalachian mountains) the sound of a screaming Bobcat will send you running for your life. Not because you think it's a bobcat trying to attack, but rather a demon or evil entity chasing you wanting to take your soul. It's almost human sounding. Made me cry when I was camping as a child. I thought it was a witch lol.
We've got a big female with kits in our back acreage and she sounds like a very drunk man trying to do a demon impression.
Hey Laurence, fellow Chicagoan here, and I'm surprised you didn't mention the loud-as-hell cicadas. I checked online, and apparently there's only one kind of cicada in England and it's pretty localized. In contrast, around here they pretty much take over the joint and scream their lungs out. (Yes entomologists, I know they're not literally screaming, it's some kind of muscle attached to a membrane, but you get the gist.)
I thought for sure that would be on the list. I really do enjoy hearing them, most of the time. The Sounds of Summer!🤗
Oklahoma childhood for sure.
Kansas as well
From the Rockford/Janesville strip. The cicadas are screamers!
@StellaMayfair7 Ah yes, cicadas! Especially the years when the 17-year variety hatch. There are so many of them that the sound is otherworldly, like an alien spaceship hovering in the sky.
Mourning doves are sometimes more reliable than my alarm, i love those noisy guys. For bird-watchers (or those curious) the Merlin app is great for identifying new birds!
I used that app!! Very helpful to identify birds i hear in the morning screaming outside my window :)
Same here. My 2nd floor apt has a balcony/deck and I have a bird-bath with a small solar fountain. I have 2 pairs of Mourning Doves that habitually visit. While I'm sitting outside they will walk along the railing 2-3 ft away from me. Their call is so relaxing.
And Cornell bird ID!
I love my eBird and Merlin apps.
I'm in Texas and mourning doves are everywhere! I love their cooing in the morning.
The reason we like white noise is because it's a good substitute for silence. Sometimes you can't get complete silence depending on if you live near a city or who you live with. If you turn off the A/C, then suddenly you can hear cars and neighbors, etc.
So true!
Sometimes we need white noise to mask the horrible snoring coming from someone nearby.
I grew up on the Mississippi, the sound of frogs has a very similar tranquil feeling to crickets. Mixing them together with the sound of water and the occasional low hum of a barge is a very peaceful symphony
I grew up in the southeast US where there are cicadas in the summer, and I had never known life without them; they were just one of those things. Apparently, when people move here, it can be terrifying if they don’t already know about cicadas because they make a very loud, not very pretty sound and it seems all around you. One way I heard someone put it once was, “The trees are screaming.” 😆
shocked and appalled you described it as not very pretty--I love the sound of cicadas
We have cicadas here in Pennsylvania so I’m not sure it’s just a southeast US thing to hear cicadas in summer. I love the sound of cicadas singing high in the trees.
The cicadas in my area are in a 17-year cycle. I remember previous cycles where I used to live and it was funny how you’d pretty much forget about that sound until it came back and then it would feel like it’d always been there.
I just posted about the cicadas up north. The ones we have are on a 7 year cycle. So once every 7 years for several days it is defining from sunrise to sunset. Then as the cicadas start to go quiet the crickets kick in until sunrise. It is exhausting to my ears.
My brother has a place in the Bue Ridge Mountains in VA. In the summer there always was a constant sound of insects but never that loud and nothing close to the cicadas up north.
I grew up around cicadas and they still scare me. It seems like sometimes they all startup when I’m walking past a section of trees, like a jumpscare.
We moved to Texas in 1974. My Dad was in the Air Force and we had lived all over the world but never in tornado country. My Mother is English and her childhood was WW2 so she had never dealt with Tornados either. The very first time the warning sirens went off she had a panic attack because they sound just like air raid sirens. Mom is 92 now and still feels panicky when the sirens go. 5 years of war and it still affects her all these years later.
that is because it was so visceral for her. ( probably for me too) . total fear of being bombed to death and the drone of the planes or the buzz bombs just before your neighborhood blew t/f up can get indelible impression in anyone's mind.
Once burnt, twice shy . . .
Yes. I thought about answering his comment about it. I'm old enough to remember being told that the original sirens used for tornado sirens had been WWII surplus. So, that IS what they are. We just didn't have many bombs dropped here.
I'm staggered to learn that UK is bereft of crickets! It really is a lovely sound; wonderful to go to sleep to. They are seasonal where I am (Melbourne, Australia), singing through the warmer half of the year. Currently Spring here, and I'm yet to hear the first cricket for the Summer. As for all those other noises...well, our birds are pretty noisy!! I ADORE them!😍
They don't have lightening bugs (fireflies) either. I think they have glow worms in extreme southern parts, but they are little worms and don't fly.
Made me realize whenever in a movie or TV show when they want to indicate that a joke or innuendo didn't go over well, they might look around surprised & say "crickets", meaning silence/over their heads. I didn't know crickets & cicada weren't universal! Being So Predominate Here. In the USA
We’re not bereft of crickets. You can hear them quite prominently in the countryside at certain times of the year. If you live in the countryside you’ll hear them at night too. Lawrence is from a town in the UK though, so that would explain his not being familiar with the sound of crickets at night.
Thunderstorms sound very different in every geography in the USA. They're a rushing wind, followed by instant downpour in the plains. Echoing thunder with startling lightening flashes, occasional pitter-patter, and an eventual steady rain in valleys / canyons. In wooded areas, a slowly building symphony from a quietening of animals to a rustling of branches and leaves, a quick few spatters of rain upon the canopy, then a rather sudden build up of constant splish-splashing falling from the leaves to the floor, coming to a crescendo in a full, blowing wind with thunder and the crashing of old, dead limbs and trees, and the roar of a river over rapids, falling from the sky. Thunderstorms are awesome in the USA.
Texas has the second loudest thunder in the US, FL the loudest. Really hard to sleep when 60,000 ft toad stranglers are rattling you out of bed...what we call big t-storms
One of my favorite activities is sitting and watching the storms approach across the plains of Kansas. Can see them for miles, watching lightning dance through the thunderheads.
When I came back from Iraq, the silence was deafening. I immediately noticed the lack of noise in my barracks room, and realized just how accustomed I had become to the constant sounds of helicopters and airplanes and rockets flying overhead. It was a very surreal experience, as I had simply expected to sleep well with the newfound quiet.
I got used to fireworks and explosions during the riots in 2020, because my neighborhood had large commercial fireworks exploding from just before sunset to just before sunrise for about 70 nights. Generally civilians aren't surrounded by loud explosions for months straight, so it was definitely a new experience.
Besides being annoying, it never felt dangerous. I had to wear earbuds and shooting ear protection to get to a point of being able to sleep. The worst part wasn't how loud it was, so much as how it was never consistent, so it was hard to adjust to. (Different timing, locations from night to night, etc.)
When my daughter came back for her first visit after moving to Saipan.. the noises here bothered her.. to busy.
She was use to quite even during the day compared to usa.
Thank you for your service 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Idk why, but for a split second I read that as rockettes. And I just accepted that jazz kicklines were common in Iraq.
Thank you.
Back in 1986 my mother’s oldest sister was visiting from W. Germany. They grew up in Bavaria through WWII.
Unfortunately, a tornado warning siren went off and my aunt screamed and ran for the basement but not because of a twister but because of PTSD from air raid sirens. Very sad indeed.
Sad?
She and her family would have been content with their "farm in the East" and never given a thought to the screams of the bombed and murdered tens of millions that the farm cost.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 what?
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 yep, there always that one idiot who blames children who survived in a war zone hiding a Jewish couple in there sub basement. Well, moron, not every German saluted the fatherland and it’s dreadful despot. You miss the point of the anecdote.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 go back under your bridge Troll
My parents are also from Germany, and my mother did not like the monthly tornado sirens they would test precisely because it reminded her of the bombers as a child and having to go to their air raid shelter. I never thought of it as trigger for PTSD until now.
I live in CO. When we have the windows open in spring and fall, you can sometimes hear dozens if not hundreds of coyote voices raising from the open spaces howling and yipping. We live in the suburbs, but they get around here and sometimes in fairly large packs. It’s so haunting and beautiful at the same time. Best background noise to scary movies at Halloween time ever.
My favorite thing I learned about coyote howls is that they can make it sound like there's more coyotes in their pack than are actually there. Still, they have so many kids I believe you when you say hundreds.
I love hearing coyotes from the safety of my home. It's scary fun 💕🤘 😂
@@kitgodsey they can sound like they are surrounding you. Like “What direction is it coming from!?!”
@@JaRule6 oh coyotes aren’t scary lol. They’re more scared of you then you are of them. Hell sometimes they’re so ignorant of you even being there they’ll come right up to you and smell you when you’re trying to hunt them lol.
@@black_hand78 They're scary if you have a pet. My relatives in southern CA say that they sometimes hear coyote yipping followed by a scream that stops abruptly, and they'll see "missing cat" posters in the next few days.
An unusual noise I hope never to hear again: In the part of NJ where I grew up we had a lot of a certain species of tree. I think it was called a mock cherry tree because while it produced little while flowers, it didn't produce any fruit... or at least, no edible fruit. Every spring we would see the arrival of tent caterpillars or bag caterpillars. And they had a special preference for this type of tree. So every spring, they would practically strip these trees bare. One spring day I was walking in a dense wooded area that had a high percentage of these mock cherry trees. I heard a faint sound that I couldn't immediately identify. As I stepped closer to one particular tree I realized the sound was the combined munching of all the caterpillars at once. It gives me a shiver now just recalling that noise. It was a noise similar to a gentle rain, but then you realize what it really was.
As a kid, I remember being involved in an effort to try to reduce the "Gypsy Moth" caterpillar (now renamed Spongy Moth) population collecting them in buckets and drowning them. Those caterpillars were decimating the Pine Barrens. It was unnerving to be in a wooded area heavily infested with them. It sounded like you were in a room full of people eating tortilla chips 😂.
I live out in the country, and one fall a friend of ours who lived in a city came up to visit us. It happened to be deer season. I'll never forget his reaction to hearing the sound of a rifle shot echoing through our valley just after dawn. He was so used to the sound of gunshots being followed by sirens, but up here it's just background noise we tune out when that time of year rolls around.
I have to laugh. Have had friends over that were from the city and freaked out when they heard gunshots in my area. I simply listened and told them " yeah, that's Bob down the road. Just his weekly target practice"
Hard to explain to people that in my area we don't freak out. Instead we listen to see who it is in case we want to go over and do some shooting with them.
A family member--either my mom or my sister, I don't immediately recall--had to take a safety course for a teaching job. The instructor mentioned that country people are often the slowest to react to a weapon emergency...because we're so used to hearing guns in ordinary situations that it takes us a minute to remember, "Oh, crap, that's not just someone target shooting!"
@@PhilowenAster Sounds about right. If you don't train yourself to distinguish between the two types of gunfire that is.
@@ptmmatssc13 I'm from a particularly high crime neighborhood in a major US city and we hear gunshots so often that we just ignore it. A drive by happens about every three days just down the block at the local drug dealer house.
Around here your neighbors respond If you target practice
Someone shoots theirs once...then someone will empty a mag escalating on until someone goes full auto then it gets quite 🤣
Bats rushing out of a cave at dusk. Such an indescribable sound. It's awe inspiring and chilling all at once
A lone bat squeaking at night is a common white noise in rural areas. Especially when it's too cool for crickets(below ~60 degrees).
I used to go hunting in central Texas and the ranch we leased had caves all over it. One of my favorite memories is sitting in the truck with my dad and getting completely enveloped by bats flying out of the cave behind us. We cranked the windows down just a little and it was magical.
Omg yes! Not many have experienced it. Such a cool sound! We would hike up the hill and sit in the mouth of the cave. Never got hit by a bat, they are insanely good at avoiding objects.
In New Hampshire we have a white nose disease.. I used to have a colony on the bellfrey of my barn
@@billsargent3407 yes, here in Kentucky we have the same problem. Mammoth Cave's bats are at extreme risk. It's heartbreaking because they truly are awe inspiring creatures
I love this guy. His humor is fantastic and the looks he gives are perfect.
“This is just my face” 🤣
Growing up in England I used to watch American TV shows such as Wagon Train and always wondered what the sound was in the background as they sat around the camp eating beans.
I never dreamt that I would end up living in the USA and be able to see and hear those creatures that make that crazy noise.
To be clear, I was talking about the crickets! After reading my previous post about the guys in Wagon Train sitting around the camp fire eating beans, someone may have thought that I was talking about something else!
You must live a very dull life.
He is a blithering fool with zero common sense
I remember cicadas sounding so annoying to me when I moved from the West coast to Chicagoland. Now I barely notice them lol. Tornado warnings can even be slightly different sounding in other towns so it's actually helpful to hear it the first Tues of the month. It's more freaky to hear it from a distance not on that day....cuz you're left paranoid wondering how close the tornado is to you and if you'll get a soon enough warning lol
You’ll notice the cicadas next year
Different species of cicadas sound slightly different. Like the 17-year cicadas we had a few years ago in Pennsylvania were way louder than the usual ones
That's so funny. Cicadas sound like summer to me. I love them ... although the special cicada year is deafening 😅
In Southeast Texas,cicadas were called locusts for some reason.
The terrifying buzz of a rattlesnake is drilled into my head as an Arizona resident. Another distinctive sound is the pounding rain and rolling thunder we get in the monsoon season. Seriously we'll get 2 inches of rain in an hour and it will sound like sheets of water are clapping your ceiling.
Those storms get intense. I’m glad I haven’t heard any rattlesnakes.
The rattlesnake sound is so distinctive, and is totally freaky. My daughter says I break tje snakes ear drums, because I always scream, "Snake, back, back, back." and start pushing everyone behind me back to safety.
Grew up in Tucson AZ and let me tell you.....that sound of a rattle will haunt me forever!! I was six and went to jump in the pool with my little floaties on and as soon as I come up I hear the rattle....a Sidewinder had curled up on the water under the diving board!! My grandfather told me I turned into one of those little wind up toys that you see that swim around, our dog jumped in the pool and killed it but to this day I still check under the diving board before jumping in!
Where are there so many rattlers? In 47 years here having lived in desert, high desert, and pine forest, I have seen one.
@@azdbuk Around my place in Central Arizona I find them 2-3 times a year in my yard. Up in the pines they are much more rare as they usually aren't active year round so the window to stumble into one is smaller.
I grew up on the north coast of California, and the sound of the surf was constant--it sounded like a VERY long train going by. When we moved inland it took me some time to adjust to its absence.
I used to rent a beach front house in Nags Head, NC for a week each year. The sound of the ocean is very hypnotizing. Even though I only heard it for a week out of a year, i got used to it instantly, and I’m sure it lowers my blood pressure.
OMG, yes. A few years back my boyfriend(at the time) and I moved into a house near the train tracks and had two wildly different reactions to night trains. He was not able to sleep through it, but I would wake up to him trying to cover his ears and listen to the familiar horns and clanking and fall right bak to sleep. Lol. it's a good thing we both moved to night shifts after that, because I loved to hear them while I was awake, and he loved that they didn't wake him up.
I used to live there, but not close enough to hear the beach.
I thought of the Outer Banks when I read your comment, and it literally sent chills down my spine. Crashing waves in the distance is one of the most wonderful sounds I can think of.
It’s a bit late for them now, but in a lot of the USA, cicadas are a common summer sound source. They are sort of a cross between crickets and tornado (or air raid) sirens. Usually you get sporadic cicadas, and you may hear one to a few at a time, but depending on both where you live and what year in a cicada brood’s prime numbered emergence cycle it is, you may hear hundreds or thousands at once. Thousands of rather large bugs advertising loudly for mates all at once make quite the racket.
"They are sort of a cross between crickets and tornado (or air raid) sirens" The best description I have ever heard! 😂
In my area, that sound indicated that it is too hot oustide
If it's during one of the superbrood years, that sound can get intensely loud. I miss it; where I live now doesn't have anywhere near the amount of cicadas that we had growing up in southern Virginia.
And when they stop, the silence is deafening.
As well as crickets, I also love cicadas. And the exact sound varies in different parts of the country, which is interesting.
these kinds of videos are so interesting to me. i’m from the burbs probably 35-40 minutes out from Chicago so it’s cool seeing things that have been so normal my whole life being so alien to someone else!
The childhood nostalgia sound I always defer to is frogs. I grew up with a freshwater bog 100 feet off the back of our property with a drainage creek between it and a pond across the street. So running water, spring peep frogs, bull frogs, green frogs, and leopard frogs, cicada, and crickets was the soundtrack to my springs and summers. Occasionally I'll come across some media that has the soundscape and I'll time travel back 20 years.
That's what I came to put down--spring peepers! So much a sound of spring in my childhood. 😃
I love the tree frogs too!
We used to have lots of frogs in the creek near where I live, but I rarely hear them at all anymore. I miss them! Fortunately, crickets are still around, but still fewer than before and not as often. The creek has grown very dry. ☹
Sounds like Summer in NY
Tree frogs.🤗
I didn't realize how much I'd miss the sound of planes flying overhead at all times of day until I moved out of the Chicago suburbs. Even 30 miles away from O'Hare you can still hear them quietly in the background. I went to a small college town and suddenly the planes were gone and the silence was deafening to me. Still makes me happy to hear them when I visit Chicago.
I can relate! I lived in the Chicago 'burbs for most of my life. When 9/11 stopped air traffic for awhile, we were all feeling the eeriness. Never realized how comforting the sounds were until then. We even lived over an hour from the city -NW burbs. We left the area 9 years ago and no place feels like home anymore. Laurence's videos have quite a few reminders for me. 😊
Oh yes, lived under the O'Hare flightpath [Rosemont].
The eerie silence during Covid when most airlines canceled flts for weeks.
Yeah, I live in the Philly suburbs and that is a 9/11 memory for sure. It genuinely took me a bit to put my finger on what I wasn’t hearing. And COVID too.
We aren't in a significant flight path anymore so we didn't notice that with covid! I hadn't thought about it. Must have been so eerie. I'm sure so much is different there now.
I love the sound of wind in the trees, sort-of a soft, roaring sigh (I realize those adjectives aren't normally used together). But my favorite tree to listen to is the quaking aspen, a beautiful tree prevalent in the Rocky Mountains. The leaves brush together and make a soft clicking noise, very distinctive.
huh, that description gave me chills.
Moved from the Michigan/Indiana boarder to southish Florida and I didn't quite realize how much of the wind was the trees moving because most of the trees around here don't make the same sounds
I love that sound, but through pine trees. A "roaring sigh" is a good description. ^__^)v
I live in Alberta, Canada and I grew up falling asleep to the sound of Boreal Chorus frogs (like a LOT of them) in the summer, and coyotes the rest of the year.
When I moved to the city for school, I found that (surprisingly) I missed hearing the coyotes screaming at 3am. But then, when I moved back closer to where I grew up, I was ecstatic when I could hear the coyotes yipping on my first night there. It helped me settle right in to my new home 🐺😊
Strange to say, but living out in the country as I do, gunshots are heard quite regularly. Either just target shooting or one of the many hunting seasons, mainly deer season. Also living here the sounds of jets flying over and occasionally they break the sound barrier and the sonic boom can really startle you and 2am.
I was going to comment on gunshots as well. I live in a rural area, surrounded by woods. The sound is especially common during deer season.
I used to live under the approach path for helicopters to the local hospital. They would shake the whole house as they flew overhead.
Strange to say, but living out in the city as I do, gunshots are heard quite regularly. Either just shooting into the air or ground or, more rarely, other things. Also, the sounds of neighborhood dogs, loud car exhausts or car audio systems. Oh, and Mexican music.
As a kid in New England) I was used to silence. Once I was in the military and in Texas, the heat was insane so I got a small fan to keep me from sweating to death. Over the years I have grown to depend on that white noise. Now with Tinnitus, without the fan not only blowing cool air on me all year around, but it blocks out the ringing in my ears, and the sound of listening to myself breathing.
Yep. I've got tinnitus too. My fan runs every day of the year.
So glad other people with tinnitus use white noise to block out the ringing, too lol
Tinnitus is brutal.
@@thatcatpuma7224 You're pretending to be stupid or actually are. I can't tell. It's very well known people with tinnitus use white noise.
I've got that exact problem, I wish there was something that could be done about it.
Crickets, especially in the Eastern US, are just a constant sound, day and night here in my rural area of Michigan, and combine with frogs, toads, and annual cicadas in the Summer. I didn't realize how much of a presence they are until I recorded a video outside, then played it back for editing. I guess that I just tune out the background noise now. When I lived in Los Angeles, the crickets were only a nighttime thing, and their other companion noisemakers were simply not a presence at all.
The Winter is very quiet, though. Most of the birds are gone, and the few hearty souls who stay the Winter, or, even more shockingly, choose to spend their Winter in Michigan, while living elsewhere in the Summer, are not nearly as vocal as American robins or Canada geese. and the crickets and cicadas are gone, while the frogs and toads are in (essentially) suspended animation.
Nothing more awe inspiring than a winter afternoon in a pine woods in Michigan. The stillness and the silence is just wonderful. I enjoy my Michigan winters.
Cicadas are even WORSE than crickets in one of their swarming years, which runs on either a 13 or 17 year cycle (depending on the species).
After I moved to Florida I had to get used to the little frogs that come out after it rains. As soon as the rain stops the frogs start in and start calling, and it can go on for ages. Not sure if they have those in other states?
I hear them right now in East Tennessee.
@@lizziefingers7528 it took me a while to realize what that noise was! They are very talkative after it rains!
Grew up in Arkansas and I sleep the absolute deepest with the background noise of an intense thunderstorm. Living in Colorado now and it’s one of the things I miss most about the South
Drive on over to Kansas. It will sound like home.
Whippoorwills, hoot owls, cicadas, the splash of a bass jumping out of the water, and the occasional bobcat were all sounds of my childhood while camping at our place in the Appalachian foothills of Eastern Kentucky on the banks of the Little Sandy River. Thank you, Lawrence, for giving me reason to pause and remember!
Oh man... you just reminded me about whippoorwills. They hang out in the fields at my parents, but I don't live in a place with meadows now. I miss that sound :/
I came to mention the whippoorwills and cicadas of western North Carolina! 😊
Lance, I was born in Eastern KY. Harlan County to be exact. Deep deep southeast Appalachians.
I hear cicadas all the time, when I grew up in Kansas in the 50's they were all around. Now it is just how my brain interperts the ringing sound in my ears.
When we emigrated to Australia, the first day I bought a bird book so we could recognise all these new species and learn their songs. First encounter near a Kookaburra scared the shit out of me - they are very loud and it was four feet over my head. Australian animals aren't as terrified of people as creatures on other continents. We also have blackbirds; why they chose to bring in that annoying warbling nightmare I'll never know. I do miss Cardnials and Bluebirds, I must admit.
On my first morning in Australia, I was woken up by what I thought was a baby crying. It was a crow 😆
I live in Oklahoma, we have so many bird species that I have spent some time learning their sounds and which bird sings what. Cardinals and mockingbirds are my favorite to talk to. I've kept a cardinal talking for almost 10 minutes by mimicking their song and patterns with my whistling, it's really cool. It would be weird not hearing my native birds, lol
Kookaburra: _OOO-OOO-OOO-AAA-AAA-AAA_
I laughed aloud at your kookaburra story. 😆
It all depends on areas.. I been to places like Costa Rica and Mexico where animals are very much all around. Many parts of America are like that. I have a bird feeder the birds let me put food in it with them all around me. Squirrels too. Then I have the lizards that run on my feet. I've also been all over Europe and pretty much any animal ran and hide immediately. Parts of Brazil animals came right too you, other not so much.
Being from an urban area as a kid, you get used to hearing every transportation mode under the sun and all the other commotion city life brings. Then when my family moved to a rural area, I couldn't fall asleep because their was no noise. Now when I think about it, we moved in February and that's late winter in the northeast so it was just cold and silent. But by summertime, boy that was a different story. Those dormant trees popped to life. All the animals, besides the ones active in the winter, came out. And did the freaking bugs show out. That 1st summer was when the "Gypsy" Moths returned and they were everywhere. In the city, it's just flies, bees, roaches, ants, mosquitoes, you know, normal stuff. When we moved to those woods and mountains, it was another level. I never heard of a Gypsy Moth so this was the 1st interaction and it wasn't very pleasant. But the crickets and frogs in the evening are very soothing. Then to be awakened at 5:00 am everyday by birds and baby birds chirping. That actually got annoying one summer. Also the woodpecker that was trying to remodel my parents home. I can't stay in the city for more than 2 days now. Family and friends ask "You wanna stay?" when I visit and I'm like "Nah I'm good. I gotta get back to the sticks."
Woodpeckers are so annoying. 🤣
I grew up rural east coast, moved to LA. Finally left and refuse to go to any big cities, anxiety and just a weird frustration being there.
I love waking up to the little birds and a beautiful sunrise.
I grew up in a relatively hot area next to a river, so every summer I fell asleep listening to frogs. But I think the most prominent background noise that featured heavily in this video (and in everyone's lives) that wasn't mentioned: cars rushing by. So many cars just whizzing by, engines pumping, tires crunching over bits of loose gravel, wind whooshing... no mention of it. It's such a background noise you didn't even think to mention it.
As a kid in Phoenix, every later summer came the piercing sound of the cicadas. I know they also are known to be heard in various parts of the country. It's such a distinctive sound that is so prevalent during that summer that you'd have to be deaf to not notice it. It's a tinnitus-like ringing, but from outside your ears. Funny enough some with tinnitus find listening to cicadas can mask the ringing in their ears and use recordings of the sound therapudicaly.
Oddly enough, it was so hot in Texas this summer, that the cicadas stopped buzzing! It was too hot even for them!
They sure get incredibly laud here in VA at times.
Definitely don’t hear them in the UK so it was a new sound for me when vacationing in NC and this was the first time I ever saw fireflies. They are so cool and I was tempted to smuggle some back in my suitcase 😆
The cicadas that only come out every 17 years or so happen in the Chicago area, but I don't know that Lawrence has been in the USA long enough to experience that. It feels like some kind of Biblical plague, with so many cicadas that they are laying on the ground like snow and flying at your face sometimes. The sound of them during those years is overwhelming.
.Some areas in Illinois have more of them than others. One of their cycles I saw them littering the sidewalks of Elmhurst, Illinois, but about ten miles away in another suburb I saw almost none of them. It depends what kinds of trees you have and how long your ground has gone undisturbed and undeveloped by construction.
An periodical cicada may only come out every so many years (13 to 17 years depending on the species).
However, there are annual cicada that come out every 1 to 9 years.
I lived in the southern part of Illinois for many years and most years we would hear cicadas
and see their empty husks on fences.
Cicadas and crickets are the two sounds that really make me feel relaxed. On another note, Chicago sirens sound like aliens are coming. My local sirens sound like death singing you a lullaby before you get wiped off the map.
That sound is what it sounds like on my dads front porch ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Were you around when the cicadas invaded the Ohio Valley in 2007 (I think it was ‘07)? They were quite literally everywhere. And sooo loud. You could not hear the person talking next to you.
I love cicadas, katydids, and crickets in the summer! Katydids are my favorite.
I'm surprised cicadas weren't mentioned.
It's _the_ sound of summer here in Texas, and I know for a fact that you get them in the upper mid-west too. Cicadas in the afternoon transition into katydids in the evening - when the lightning bugs come out. It's magical.
Crickets can be relaxing, until you get one that finds a cup or empty plant pot laying on its side which makes for a very effective resonating chamber to amplify its chirping. I've had a few like that that forced me to track it down outside in the middle of the night because the noise was literally painful.
It's the katydids and frogs that I enjoy most.
I've lived in America for 40 years, and never would have thought I've heard anything called "cicades." Maybe a lot of Ameriacns mistake that sound for crickets, and the video guy just lumped them together. I know I would have, and I'm an American, lol...
But I've never lived in a place, where I heard either sound near the houses I lived in at the time. Random American suburbs.
@@nauscakes1868 It may be that they are called "locusts" in your area. When I was a kid all of my family called them locusts. It was only later that I found out that they are actually called cicadas. Locusts are actually a type of grasshopper and are a completely different thing.
Or maybe you just don't have them where you live. If you did, you would recognize them. Their rattling buzz comes in waves of call-and-response that seems to pulse back and forth from tree to tree all around you.
@@nauscakes1868 I live in the suburbs in Alabama. I'll hear crickets, cave crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs. My basement/garage has cave crickets. They are long jumping and extremely noisy. We have the regular black and brown crickets around here, too. A couple of months ago, we had cicadas being noisy. I almost stepped on one going out my backdoor. The tree frogs are noisiest after it rains. I'll sometimes see them clinging to the trees. Most of the suburbs in Alabama have lots of trees - and I mean lots. Many of the homes, including mine, are surrounded by trees. We get to see lots of insects and birds, spiders, lizards and snakes, etc. I've even had a copperhead snake make its way into my basement/garage (probably looking for crickets) which bit my big dog on the nose a few years back. Those snakes are venomous, but my dog managed to pull through. Thank goodness he's a large breed. My small dog probably would not have made it.
We have both crickets and cicadas in NYC. Love the sounds. Also, male pigeons calling in the spring.
I can't imagine living without those birds. Wow.
And crickets. These are such a peaceful sound. It resonates in your soul.
Since we're talking about the sounds we grew up with... I grew up in coastal Central California and one sound that I grew up with was the sea lions barking down on the beach and by the wharf, especially in the early morning. They weren't a year-round presence but when they were out in force you could hear them from quite a distance.
Santa Cruz? I lived there and got used to the combination of waves, sea lions, and that deep buoy signal
@@Viraus2 Close! Monterey
And smell them, no doubt. We've got tons of them here too.
I know that sound.
They are loud too. When I have gone to the coast and seen them they get really loud. We never had a bunch of them in SoCal although they are at the harbors sometimes. We were in the coast outside SF once and there was a beach full of them. It was loud.
The standard book series when I was in College for Forestry is the Peterson Field Guides. The books are all blue (makes them easy to recover when dropped) and cover subjects such as insects, birds, fish, trees, plants, wildlife, wildlife tracks and so forth. I referred to by books throughout my career with the US Forest Service.
One of the best stories I ever heard was of a park ranger who was approached by a visitor asking for help identifying a bird. The description wasn't familiar, but he recommended that the man try the area's Peterson guide. The man replied "That won't help; I'm Roger Tory Peterson".
Peterson Guides are a staple requirement for woods-walking. Must have.
I live about 2 miles from a race track and all summer long, every Friday & Saturday the everpresent background noise of racecars is just there. I actually find it quite soothing in a way.
At night when traffic gets quiet I've heard the train. Miles away. Rarely in daytime.
I love you channel! You have a new subscriber. Sending love from South Carolina (Virginia native).
I would have thought a clear and defined letter ‘R’ would have been a sound you hadn’t heard until moving here 😆
Of course he's heard a rhotic _R._ They belong at the end of a word ending in _AW._
Perhaps he’ll have a long hard think about that next time he looks in the ‘meerrrr’ 😂
@@unnecessaryapostrophe4047 and A. Like Donna, Linda, etc
Yeah even I think we sometimes sound like pirates after I've listened to British accents for hours on end. 😆
The Scottish accent has a pretty strong r sound
Katydids in late summer, great-horned owls in midwinter, spring peepers in early spring, cicadas in midsummer. Comforting sounds of the seasons that mark the passage of time.
You could write poetry.
After moving to Texas, I discovered where the birds fly to in winter. My supermarket's parking lot. Specifically, the bird I am referring to is the Grackle, a large black bird with an even larger call. And then to hear that amplified by several hundred birds is almost deafening.
There's a lot of native grackles in Texas too, they have a good year long population in supermarket parking lots. I don't go to the city very often but I've seen them roosting in the power lines at night, it's impressive seeing those things just absolutely covered by hundreds of birds.
If I remember correctly a lot of the migratory Birds here in Washington a lot of them will go down to Texas and then they'll make their cute little feathery butts further south and then they'll migrate back up and then eventually make their way back into Canada
😆
Texas grackles sound like a sci-fi alien language.
Grackles are nasty. If they decide to nest in an area hundreds set up camp and make a mess of anything beneath.
I love how cardinals sound like little laser guns. One excellent bird ID book is the Sibley Field Guide to Birds. Used it in my ornithology class to great effect
As a military brat I spent the first 25 years of my life living near Air Force bases. The first time I moved to a town that didn't have a base or local airport, it threw me to not hear the roar of plane engines overhead throughout the day. When I moved again and got an apartment right under the landing flight path to an airport, it was strangely soothing. :)
I too live near an airport. Hearing jets everyday and the occasional helicopter is just normal for me. They stopped flying the jets here about 10 years ago or so, but now are bringing them back and in an odd way it’s nice to hear them again. The local news station even interviewed us about it. Since some people in our area aren’t too fond of the sound. I think I enjoy it because it reminds me of my dad. He was a WWII and Korean War Air Force Pilot. He died in 2018, but I knew he kind of like hearing the jets over our house. Plus it brings Al out of business to our town like restaurants, VA clinic, stores, etc with the influx of military people moving here and their families.
I've lived near Luke Air Force Base (our largest fighter training base) for 35 years. I missed the planes when I briefly consulted in Arkansas and Mississippi.
I grew up near a base, then moved near an interstate where I have vehicle traffic making sounds for me. :) even better if there's a train that comes through periodically.
There is a huge and somewhat surprising difference between the nighttime summer sounds I hear in the New York suburb/exurbs compared to the sound I hear in rural coastal Maine Midcoast). The NY exurb nighttime sound is FILLED with the sound of tree frogs and other frogs, insects and mockingbirds and a couple other birds. The sounds in Maine are unbelievably silent--though occasionally disrupted by a fox or fisher screaming.
Oh the noise those fishers make is crazy. When I first moved to Massachusetts from New Jersey, I had never heard of "fisher cats", as they're called here, and the first time I heard one scream in the dead of night in a wooded area I freaked the f out
In some parts of the US the air raid sirens were not repurposed to tornado sirens (because some parts of the US don't get tornados often enough for there to be a regular system), but the sirens were instead repurposed to summon volunteer firefighters. Young Indiana nieces absolutely panicked when they heard the sirens on a beautiful, clear, sunny day in the Finger Lakes!
Oh, yes! The borough I used to live in used the air raid siren for the fire department. It was slightly terrifying at first.
The town I live in, in Oregon uses one if those sirens for the volunteer firefighters and EMT's.
My town did that, at least I think they did because our fire/tornado siren sounds just like an air raid siren.
We had a little refrigerator magnet distributed by the county. While it's been almost 10 years since I've moved out of there, I remember it was something like:
Alternating High-Low - Calling emergency responders, no civilian action required
Continuous High - Danger requiring evacuation
Continuous Low - Danger requiring shelter-in-place
Along with the AM and FM emergency broadcast frequencies, the short-range local walkie-talkie frequency for reporting flash floods/forest fires/impassable roads, and (in case of a severe earthquake) the address & GPS coordinates of designated safe gathering areas away from power & gas lines or tall trees.
We use air raid sirens to summon volunteer firefighters here in New Zealand as well. In rural areas.
Funny, I’m just 85 miles north of you in Wisconsin and our cross walks are silent. I regularly Journey down to Rush University in Chicago, and have never noticed the noise at crosswalks. Next appointment I’m going to have to try them out!!!
I can't believe you didn't mention the sound of cicadas! I love that sound and wait to hear the first buzz of a cicada every summer. I know many areas of the country either don't have them or only get the 17-year-cycle species, but we have them every summer in Indiana.
Here in Virginia, we get cicadas about every 17 years, but in some areas not as bad, we now live in eastern Va. but we used to live near the Blue Ridge Mountains where they were everywhere, they were so disgusting looking, totally grossed me out.
In NE Ohio we get both of them, the every year and 17 year ones. I hate them when they're close but distant ones are tolerable. During our last 17 year cycle they were DEAFENING.
The sound of cicadas and lawnmowers is the sound of summers on Long Island, New York from my youth in the '60's and early '70's.
Minnesota and Illinois definitely hear that buzzing in the summer time.
Oh I hate that buzzing! I’m so glad to have left it behind me!
Oddly, the sounds I heard in childhood are rare for the USA and most of the world, and I was raised on a typical small US city.
I fell asleep every single night to the roaring and huffing of African lions and peacocks cawing.
I grew up 1/2 mile from the zoo, and since traffic noise wasn't near enough to drown it out I only heard the lions. The peacocks belonged to our next door neighbor, and the zoo, and they are very loud.
Now in my 70s, and living in a different Colorado small town there are three major differences in sounds:
1. The local tourist train is pulled by an antique steam locomotive, so from 9am to 9pm the steam whistles are about every 5 minutes.
2. It's a small tourist town, so not much traffic noise, and very seldom sirens or even car alarms.
3. Our town has a herd of very tame but free roaming donkeys, so it is common to hear a dozen donkeys braying right outside your window.
It almost sounds like you live near Tiny Town, or the Georgetown Loop. Pretty areas.
@@kathleenmccrory9883 Close: I grew up in Pueblo Colorado, and now live in Cripple Creek Colorado.
@@dannyreynolds2751 Ah..still pretty.
Small world, my son volunteers at a tourist train in NJ. He was just telling me of an older member who is out in CO for a long visit & joined a narrow gauge group.
Wow. That’s really neat.
I live along the San Francisco Bay and you can often hear the foghorns, I’m sure any costal region can relate to this but with so much of the US being inland it’s strange to be so far from the ocean whenever I visit other places
There are foghorns on the shores of the Great Lakes, too.
@@Alex_Plante makes sense lol
@@Alex_Plante I was just going to say the same... brought a nice memory of my childhood back! First thing I noticed missing when I moved "inland" was the sound of that fog horn...
Yes! I was born by SF Bay and fog is my favorite weather. I love the foghorns.
Walk out on the G.G. bridge, you can stand on the deck over the frog horns...
The one real bass one will vibrate you.
I about died when you said the bit with the heater and fan being a catch-22... that's my life's struggle right there.
We moved from the Hill Country of Texas to the piney woods of Texas and were amazed at the tree frogs calling in the night, such a lovely sound! Still have coyotes, owls, birds of prey and ducks flying overhead at autumn, all great sounds, don't miss the mountain lions screaming like they did in central Texas, that always brings shivers of fear...
There are no mountain lions in the Texas hill country, fool
You didn't carry a gun with you?
Right? I heard one right outside my window the first year I moved here.
I had no idea what it was, but it was horrifying!
Thank goodness it was just that one time.
I've live in SE Arkansas near where bayou Bartholomew ends and the southern farming fields never stop as they go towards Mississippi. Can someone tell me how to turn off my tree frogs in the summer because they are LOUD at night. I lived in South Texas for 3 years in high school and it was so nice to not be deafened by frogs and millions of cicadas at night omg
I live in the Hill Country and living next to a river we hear frogs ALL the time! Same with foxes and sometimes those cats. I absolutely love the sound of wooded areas in Texas, I don't think I could live anywhere else.
I live in Southern California near a bird sanctuary. We get people from all over the world coming to see the birds. My parents made friends with some of them. One photographer from England took pictures of the birds and sent my mom and grandmother beautiful prints he had taken. It is their favorite art.
I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska for four years and missed hearing crickets. My first summer back in the lower 48, I was so excited to hear them again!
My sister in CO lives at 6,000 ft. elevation. She also doesn't have crickets, but when we speak by phone, she always comments that she can hear our crickets here in VA and she loves them!
Probably not common in many parts of the states, but there are some places that have a lot of trains due to industrial cities/states. I lived very close to trains for the better part of my life and loved hearing them chugging on by.
Yes, soothing sounds of childhood.
Tree frogs after a drenching rain, or crickets in a dry heat (millions of both) .. all in chorus can be be deafeningly loud yet subtly relaxing. They all go silent in unison .. bringing an eerie hush, like a classical movement. Then strike up the band .. they all resume their deafening cacophony. God's music .. indeed. Relax .. enjoy!
When our kids were little we had a tree frog climb up the kid's window singing just as loud as it could. Told my son he was singing him the song of his people. We use to not have tree frogs then got a pool & they took up residency in our willow tree & took nightly swims in our pool.
The sound (and smell) of the ocean! It's amazing how many people around the world don't live close enough to the sea to hear it regularly!
That's something I long for, and make special vacation trips just to hear it at night. Sigh... such a wonderful sound.
@@dawngw26 Oh definitely! I was a sailor for 2 years and now I can't leave it, moved house to a small seaside town on the coast of Wales be closer to the sea 😛
@@morganpengwlad I can't give up living near the ocean either.
I like the sound, definitely not the smell tho
It totally blew my mind when I learned that the British didn't have crickets. It's just an ever-present part of the soundscape here during certain parts of the year.
Yeah. In the UK, they have cricket, but not crickets. Here in the US we have crickets, but not cricket.
I didn't know they don't have them, either.
I don't know what I would do without the sounds of crickets and katydids at night.
West coast doesn't have 'em either. Must be the wet and overcast weather that they just can't thrive in. Going from no crickets to crickets is a very weird experience.
When Americans started using the word "crickets" to describe quiet or no response ex. like "Anyone home?". Crickets. Sort of like "radio silence" 😶, a lot of people in the world must have gone "huh?"
@@StuffandThings_ Yes, we do have crickets. Not in the same abundance as other parts of the country, to be sure, but we do have them.
I live in a rural area of Kentucky and I hear coyotes quite a bit in the evenings. Then in the Spring the wild turkey hens start yelping and the toms start gobbling during mating season. I love where I live!
Where I live (Midwest) the tornado sirens are tested the first Wednesday of every month. So 99% of the time, I will hear an ominous siren in the distance and think “oh, it’s Wednesday”.
What happens if a tornado decided to show up during the test?
Isn’t it the first Tuesday of every month?
@@adriannahelstad799 in MN it goes off first Wednesday of each month at 1pm, but it can vary from county to county, as they control when it sounds. from a brief internet search it is the first Tuesday in the quad cities area
The local chemical works tests is sirens on Mondays at 10 am. The first time my partner heard it she thought it was an air raid
In North St. Paul, MN they blast theirs at noon each day. I think just from M-F, but now I can't be sure because I tune it out so often. It's just to let residents know it's noon as far as I can tell.
The winter nights in the Midwest are usually pretty silent, but sometimes you'll hear a great horned owl. It's very eerie. They like to nest in January in order to get the drop on the other birds.
You pointed out some good ones for your area. Here in Texas, I think the most notable are the common cicadas. At least where I live, they're quite noisy. And when I visit a more rural area I can also hear coyotes at dusk/dawn sometimes (only when people haven't been noisy enough to scare them off--and I'm not in danger when I hear them, don't worry!).
I always love cicada season, much freakier in close proximity, like bat sonar ,
I've heard coyotes occasionally here in michigan
theres some sort of insect in the desert in california. might be a cicada. i can tell when i walk by the tree in the summer, it sounds like electricity in a way. its very wierd
I think there are about 100 different species of cicadas. Each of them comes out at a different time interval. Some of them emerge every year, some of them every 4 years, some of them 7 or 8 years, and there is one species that comes out every 17 years. In any given year there are always 2 or more species present. They don't bite or sting, and are actually very rarely seen, I think they spend most of their time in trees.
I hate cicadas. Most people pronounce the word wrong (they say si-cay-duh, which is wrong), and they scream at you so loud when you get near their tree. I love screaming back at them to shut up. They usually listen.
Ooooh, Laurence, did you know that crickets chirp slower as the weather cools? In the spring & fall they chirp much slower than in the summer. You’re welcome, from SW Ohio 😁
Only a week ago, after watching a famous military person on a show, I realized that my habit of going to bed with a fan on was not just to keep cool but to cover up my tinnitus. It never occurred to me that was the reason for always having some white noise to sleep by.
I have horrible tinnitus as well and I can't sleep without some form of white noise. You'd think the ringing in my ears would suffice but nope.
I sleep with s fan for the same reason. Some nights I have to play something boring on my phone and pop in my ear buds. The one regret I have in life is not wearing ear protection at car races and concerts.
Oh, and one really amazing sound that you might hear not terribly far from Chicago is a loon call. It's the state bird of Minnesota, but they sometimes also summer in Wisconsin. When I was a kid, we'd go camping up north almost every summer, and we'd often hear them in the night. It's a mournful, haunting sound when they call to one another, and absolutely distinctive.
The loons. lol
One loon call sounds like the wail of a lost soul drifting across the lake.
Another loon call sounds like the cackling laugh of a deranged axe murderer.
If you are out camping with someone who has never heard a loon before, they will invariably ask, "WHAT was that?"
When you tell them, "It is just a bird, Go back to sleep." they will respond, "That is NOT a bird."
You won't hear a loon very close to Chicago - they need a lake without a lot of boat wake or.noise. I love the sound when camping in Canada.
YES! First time I heard one was on a middle school camping trip in Northern MN. I didn’t know what it was, so my brain made up all sorts of terrifying creatures (wolves? Werewolves? Yeti?!). Never once did I consider it might be a bird 🤦🏻♀️ they sound creepy af if you don’t know what you’re hearing haha
Reminds me of the pet semetary book, described those loon calls so well that when I actually heard them in Iowa it was deliciously spooky
Loons are very special 🙏
I grew up in the city of PHX AZ, so road sounds, traffic, and crickets were a thing at night. BUT at 18, almost 30 years ago we moved to the east coast in the country of eastern NC, we had woods to the side and back of our home. This is when i learned about the loud summer song of the tree frogs. I thought i would never sleep again.
But now, i can not live without it. Our currwnt home is the first time the woods are farther away, and tree frogs are not such a thing here often. But yes, crickets, tree frogs, owls, and all the critters are a must for me to sleep.
The coquí frogs in puerto Rico are the same
I grew up in Phoenix, as well, and I moved to Raleigh a few years ago. The frogs are the best!
OH yes tree frogs!! How could I forget love that sound and miss it here in the midwest.
A distinctly American sound I'm surprised to not see anyone commenting on is the absolutely terrifying buzz of rattlesnakes.
@@padenlisk2447 thankfully not in my area. Maybe those who live by them feel differently, since they know what to do when they hear one (unlike a tornado, when you have no control over what will happen)
Where I am from in the south you learn to just ignore the sirens and start listening for the freight train noise outside.
Coal barges along the Ohio River. It's actually quite a reassuring sound; when the pandemic hit we didn't hear the for weeks or the cargo trains across the river. When the sounds started again it was a relief that things were getting back to normal.
'Bird book', look for the books from 'The Audubon Society'. I believe there are huge volumes that relate to specific regions of the U.S. (NW, SW, Central, Eastern, etc.). Being in Oregon and having lived in Montana, Missouri and British Columbia, have 2 such books (NW & Central). They're comprehensive and cover everything from habitat & migration to food sources to song to the number, color & size of each species' eggs. Pretty much everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask... Kinda like you didn't ask for this 'book' info... 😏
you can get excellent regional books by Roger Tory Peterson, they are smaller, well illustrated, and small enough to carry in a large purse or a backpack.
@@judythompson8227 , There's an app on your phone for that..... just saying.
@@penname40 but holding a book feels nicer
We lived deep in the woods of Kentucky for 4 years offgrid. Night time was dead silent. Most people don't know what that means. When we moved back to civilization, it was so noisy. Your house hums with electricity, traffic a half mile away, and there is a tone. A steady sinewave tone. My son in law thanked me for pointing it out, because he didn't want to sound crazy for hearing it.
I've never been to Kentucky but wasn't there noise from bugs and animals in the woods?
Ah damn, you hear that tone, too? I hate that shit. All this non-renewable energy creates a chorus of noise pollution, drives my autistic ass crazy.
I grew up in a heavily forested area of south Alabama and between the sounds of frogs, crickets, katydids, night birds, and the occasional coyote I would find the night quite loud. I never noticed until I would go home to visit after moving away.
Ya'll never woke up around 3am to listen to a whippoorwill call 1632 times in a row?
Not to mention the noise of hundreds of A/C units in the summer T-T
I moved to Georgia from California years ago, I didn’t know how loud summer nights were in the south; frogs, crickets, and katydids, is what you hear. I love it a find it to be rather comforting.
The sounds of summer vaction as a kid in Ohio, The AC running, cicadas, crickets at night, bicycles going by, the bird calls primarily in the morning and evening, the crack of a baseball bat, the music from the ice cream truck, kids playing in the distance. Just good times all-around.
Don't forget the never ending lawn mowers
@@withthelambs1614 My neighbor seems to always be mowing his lawn or blowing the slightest scrap of leaf off his driveway
Cicadas, yes! There are a few of those buggers every year that are off cycle and make "that" sound!
I live just outside a decent sized city, so I have the luxury of living in a "rural" area that is relatively quiet yet can just drive 5 minutes into town. Particularly I live in a wooded area, and my favorite sound ever is the morning doves on a sunny morning. Brings me back to my childhood.
Up here, in Oregon's Hood River Valley, the sound of frost fans is fairly ubiquitous, at least in late winter/early spring when there is a danger of frost damage to the pear and cherry trees. I couldn't find a RUclips video of the fans in action, but they sound like a squadron of old school propellor driven airplanes getting ready to take off.
That took me a couple of seconds, I think you are talking about the "anti-frost" fans. Yes, we don't really use them in Willamette Valley. Though a few times the sprinklers are used, to cover in ice, as it protects fruit flower buds at certain stages.
There's even services from crop-dusting firms to fly over fields to prevent frost so you're not even wrong on both counts!
I used to live in Oregon the first things that pop into my mind where lawn mowers and chainsaws.
@@Bedwyr7 Yes, a friend of mine flew helicopters, and did the low slow fly and hover over orchards a couple of years. It was a speedy option for farmers, but less than losing an entire crop.
I live in MA near a river and a swamp. Every year I love hearing the spring peepers, the bullfrogs and crickets.