Why we should listen to the many sounds of nature

At night, I could now roughly tell the time by the sounds coming from beyond the cemetery. Till around 11 pm or midnight, street dogs would be on active patrol, alerting each other with their barks, just like watchmen blowing their whistles and banging their sticks. By 2 am, a deathly silence descended. There was no traffic roar, like all good watchmen, the dogs had called it a day. But I didn’t have to worry: their substitutes — the peacocks — were on duty, high up in the trees. Any ghost that was breaking curfew would be immediately called out, first, by one bird, and then all of them.

Morning brings its usual bird calls and songs: my alarm, the red-whiskered bulbul, wakes me with a tentative melodious whistle at first light, soon accompanied by the soft jingling of white-eyes and a tailorbird which has no time for niceties and just shouts in my ear. The magpie-robin, alas, has stopped singing — ravenous babies have to be looked after, so there’s no time to sing. A family of shikras has been vocally very active all through the day and even the spotted owlets argue querulously at midday. Jungle babblers erupt into a cacophony of shrieking, just like in TV debates. But, afterwards, they do kiss and make up, which I don’t think they do after TV debates.

But, to really experience the natural world waking up, you need to be in the hills or a forest and, you do not really need a lockdown — provided you’re far away enough from the nearest road. Now, in the cool Prussian-blue pre-dawn light, a whistle of piercing clarity and sweetness rings out from the garden outside. The blue-rock thrush has awoken and you hear his claws on the tin roof as he hops around. He’s soon joined by others, the ubiquitous white-eyes, white-cheeked bulbuls, tits, et al, culminating in the lunatic call of a lovelorn hill barbet calling from, say, Mukteshwar to his love in distant Nainital!

Even better is to go wandering in a forest at dawn. Again, the sacred silence is broken first by one mellifluous singer, then another and before you know it a whole grand philharmonic orchestra is playing for you! It’ll carry on for a short while and suddenly stop as the birds get busy with the rest of their agendas. At dusk, too — especially in cities with plenty of trees — you can hear the incessant chatter of birds like mynas and parakeets returning to their roosts, bursting with gossip which they just have to exchange at the tops of their voices.

In the jungles, there are, of course, the calls of larger wild animals to listen out for. The silence of dawn in Gir is shattered by the rasping roar of an unseen lion, stirring something visceral in you. The low rumbling baritone growl of a leopard or tiger can start a mixie in your tummy and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand. Elephants, too, rumble long and sonorously although, frankly, their hysterical trumpeting seems undignified for a beast so grand. Even the vegans can sound intimidating: while photographing birds at Sultanpur National Park years ago, I was startled by an angry grunting sound, coming from a huge nilgai bull behind me. Inadvertently (I swear), I had come between him and his bevy of girls — with whom he thought I was doing the paparazzi thing!

Even the smaller creatures can give you a sense of the wild: the incessant chirping of crickets and cicadas in the forest, the wonderful chorus of frogs after a downpour. But be warned: if you would like to hear nature at her best, visit a jungle or a sanctuary or a national park asap. Because, all too soon, all you’re likely to hear in these places is the roar and clank of bulldozers and JCBs, the scream of chainsaws and the thud of falling trees.

(Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and bird watcher)