Tuesday, March 14, 2017
We had a beautiful day in Patagonia today, brilliant
sunshine and temperatures in the 60s. Somewhat
different from Rochester and the whole east coast, we hear.
We took a three-hour hike in a national park forest
adjacent to our hotel, and it was lovely:
We heard unusual sounds, over and over, coming from
high in the trees. The woman at the
entrance to the national park was unable to identify it, so I’m asking for
ideas. Others on the path we hiked were
fascinated with it and also unable to identify it. As Blogger doesn't let you upload audio files, I'll send the file around when I send a note that this post is up.
We have no idea how her outfit stayed on, but it
did. After a phenomenal demonstration of
tango and some variations on it, we had a group tango lesson. Now it is supposed to be danced with the
partners leaning slightly forward, chests touching, and with grace and rhythm
and balance. There will be no photos and
no videos. Although we had some balance,
there was minimal rhythm and no grace.
Another wonderful 3-hour dinner, and it’s off to Buenos Aires tomorrow.
Joyce's brother Bruce sent the following note:
ReplyDeleteVictor -- The sounds made by the oro pendula are quite varied and might include the sounds you heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gGoF68mmY0
That seems more likely than my first thought, which is that the Patagonian fauna have developed the theremin.
ReplyDeleteI listened to several videos of orependula chirping etc. on YouTube. They all sounded very birdlike. (And lovey--thanks, Bruce! What amazing nests!) What your Patagonian recording sounded like to me was something very different: we've heard it in our walks in the woods here in Maryland. It's almost surely the sound made by a branch that has broken off and then gotten caught by another branch on the way down, and the broken-off branch is now swaying in the breeze. The sound is presumably created by friction between the bark of one branch and the bark of the other, amplified (and its pitch defined?) by the length of the thinner, broken branch. That's my guess. In our case, we actually did see the branch that was clearly the singing one--it was several feet long, and just hanging there, caught as if for eternity, like a mythological Aeolian harp. I can't be sure if that's what you were hearing, but it sounded nearly identical. That it was caused by a one-time fluke (a single falling branch, caught in mid-air) may explain why a local guide would not have heard it nor perhaps even have identified it as some kind of normal forest sound, even if she heard it herself.
ReplyDeleteI suspected that right from the beginning, but the others who were hearing it rejected that explanation, as did the naturalist who said she didn't know what it was. I still think you're right! Thanks, Ralph. I love the reference to the mythological Aeolian harp!
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