Nesting Curlews and La Rocque and Roll

Sound. I often talk about the things I see but not as often the things I hear around me. I was obliged to think about sound recently by two disparate events--but life is never a tidy narrative.

Curlews are large birds, so I discovered. Although normally wading birds, they come a long way from water to nest. All this I discovered first by happy accident--a large curlew-beaked bird was walking in the gawky way of a land bound heron in the field above the house. Could it be a curlew? Well, off to find the bird book. Sure enough curlews are big--at least by the time they are ready for romance and reproduction--this guy is nearly as big as a pheasant. He can give my getting- tamer-every-day-farm cats a run for their money.

The bird book explained that the smaller curlew-beaked bird (a 5-7 inch skinny beak bent slightly down in case you don't have a bird book close by) is a whimbrel. Whimbrel is a word that needs to be said aloud for the fun of the tickle. It reminded me of a young woman years ago whose favourite word was wimple. I ownder where she is now and if she remembers that was once her favourite word.

I have a fondness for curlews because my daughter's birth announcement sported a water colour arctic curlew--Inuit art. Every time I see a curlew I think of her. Because I am so far away that now makes me happy-sad as so many recollections do.

OK back to sound--if I had heard what a curlew says I might have picked another card. The call is supposed to be something like coo e loo or some such, but it had another intriguing entry made in passing about their "wild whistling". I heard that wild whistling his morning. More of them have wandered away from their pond to the nesting grounds so there is now quite a chorus. I cannot begin to replicate that here. You will just have to find your own curlew and have a listen.

The other sound event is trying to get Skype to work. I have faffed about with settings and plugs and Wizards--of the electronic variety--and I can hear things, the message that tells me my microphone doesn't work, for example, but I can also hear music on the computer which had not been working for some time. Hence, I am listening to one of my favourite CDs from my previous life.

Indianapolis has an annual early music festival. It had been going on for years--a handful of people put it on and over the years it grew a faithful audience. Even though Indianapolis is not a cultural hub, early music groups loved to come there for the festival because after many years there was a dedicated and knowledgeable audience. So La Rocque and Roll is the title of a CD by Baltimore Consort, subtitled, "popular music of Renaissance France." It was worth faffing with the settings to hear this again.