WHEN COUNTLESS VOICES BREATHE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHEN COUNTLESS VOICES BREATHE

' By HILDA KEANE

'pHAT is a pleasant hour which sits between the day and the dusk. In it the colours of earth and sky, and of the quiet sea, take 011 an almost pensive tone, and the voices of living things become gentle, subdued. The long trill of a lark floats down from the high heaven ; a thrush talks in a near thicket; a faraway tiu throws a "clang, clang, clang!" But not with the full-throated song of high day do these notes peal out; they fall more softly, more gently. And, as a screen behind them, the happiest sound I know, the call of children at play. Muted by distance, less regular than the chanting of birds, their cool, shrill notes rise and fall in lovely cadence. A vagrant breeze brings them near; they die away again; but never do they lose their joyousness, their uplifting happiness. Then one becomes conscious of a softly concerted chorale from the forest —the blended chime from sleepythroated birds, whispering, cheeping, not quite singing. The lark has said his evening prayer, and dropped to a grassy nest; the thrush is but murmuring; only the tui faces the night still gallantly. He will sing until half-past eight, and bo on the wing at dawn; but his notes are growing sparser. The Veils o! Night

Haze is blurring tho lines of boundary trees, resolving fields and plantations into one homogeneous countryside. It is turning green to grey, and making of the glistening sea a sheet of white. And similar veiling is woven about the calls and cries, into the misty half-silence a far engine hoots. In the day its siren note was lost among the medley of sounds. Now it is distinct, musical, pervading tho upland quiet. Nature breathes softly, as if resting. So tho grey veils fall and, gradually, it is night. If one were unaware of it, that reprobate, tho morepork owl, would soon acquaint the world. Silent and hidden by day, he is almost viciously alivo in the darkness. In all my years about the shadowy bushtrees' I have only onco seen a morepork, and then ho passed so swiftly, with such hushed flight, that he might well have been an illusion. But there is no illusion about his evening revels; and his flirtations are audacious. Ho calls and calls and, if comes not, he squeals eommandingly. She answers, anything but coyly; between them they have at least four cries, and I find none of them resembling an appeal for pork. They lead a most active existence in the shades. Not only among tho dark trees, either, do they spend their gay hours. For often, past iny window, in the deep darkness, there is a shriek of fear —the shriek of a little bird pursued unto the death by tho swift-flying, noiseless-winged owl of the night. And those people who have canaries and tho like had better screen them well against the fascinating glare of the morepork's torch-like eyes, and of his body flattened against tho cage-wires. Weird Night Noises

Now begin the little shufflings of the bush. What are they? Wekas that step about and utt'er plaintive, wheedling notes? I have not seen a weka for years, not since that unhappy time when one got, caught in a rat-trap, and stood, in the early morning, shaking his poor bleeding head at us. His was not true gratitude; for when he was released, he pecked the hand that freed him. We used to hear, in the still

Sounds in the Ni^ht

night, the thin, shrill cry of a rail down by the little swamp; but ho has long left the haunts of man. Now there are stoats: 1 saw, the other day, the sinuous red body of one gliding across the path. These move about at night, sneaking their way into birds' nests, destroying much innocent life. There are bush rats, too, and tiny field-mice, making no particular sound; just creeping about, disturbing the fallen leaves, rustling among the grasses, climbing along the boughs. And beetles, whose wings snap; moths that flutter; and over so many insects. Their night-life is a thing hidden from us humans ; but it is there, with its whisperings and soft movings, while we speak of the silence of the night. One may walk all day through forest lands, poke here and there, never see anything but a tinv, scurrying form, bear no sound but wind in the trees. Yet, as soon as night falls, there are all sorts of little eerie noises. In summer, the crickets will whistle the night through; the cicadas will clap their legs in mad defiance of us. But these have not come alivo yet, so their sounds are missing. Sounds from the City As the hours go by, tho sounds change astonishingly. The wind will bring the moaning of seas on the bar —more often, there comes across the Manukau the throbbing of machinery on the southern shore. Then, when one might think tho world asleep tho vibration of the city's late motor-traffic begins. Not only those cars that stray, curiously, at odd hours of the night, about our country roads; but the general hum of traffic in the streets of Auckland. A radio may peal out its

soprano or bass notes for a while; the motor hum returns and persists. i slept one night in the heart of the city. I endured the grinding of traincars 011 their tracks until midnight; I listened to tho harsh starting of motors until two o'clock. Then 1 fell asleep. At four in the morning a taxi whirred off from the stand below*, and there was no more rest. So J now understand why, all through the night, I hear, in the hills, the pulsation of motor machinery and the tooting of horns. There is no silence, any more, in modern life; one would have to go far, far away, to escape noises in the night. Mysteries Unsolved

If one is resigned, there is a certain interest in being awake, so many and so varied are the sounds. Those terrific cracks in the joists that seem to threaten the stability of the house; the crackling of the cooling roof-iron; the suddenly-raised ticking of a clock; the stealthy tread of a mouse on the ceiling above; the puff of wind that rattles a casement and swishes through the room—all the strange sounds that are never heard by day. They are interesting but disturbing. And just as one has decided that there is something not quite normal about one of them, and that perhaps one should call out, sleep drops down and blots out every one of them, mvstcries for ever unsolved.

And almost at once there approach "the white feet of the coming day." The tui is aloft on the tree-spire; the thrushes and blackbirds are lustily singing ; over the bill a dog is barking. From a farm in the valley there comes the lowing of a cow, the clank of milkbuckets. The mist is rolling away before the cool morning breeze, and the trees are swaying in gentle rhythm. All clear, happy sounds. And soon, transcending them all, riso the tuneful cries of young children, calling to each other, laughing at soino little foll.v, singing from that sheer delight in life which is the blessing of childhood. For in the holidays, youngsters rise early and plav late; the sweet harmony of their distant voices proclaims the day, and ushers in the night.