Georgia Spring: Change
music
ambience: Chuck Will’s Widow calls, Katydids
Take an early morning stroll through the southern Piedmont area of Georgia this time of year and you’re likely to hear many different types of birds. But the soundscape changes through the seasons. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by DuPont.
“This is a Carolina Wren…”
We’re with Jeff Jackson, a wildlife expert at the University of Georgia who can identify just about any bird call he hears, and this morning, there are plenty of them.
“All those different notes, (makes sounds), that’s all the same bird. That’s the yellow-breasted chat, and that is one of my favorites of this time of the year. But anyway, that bird is one of the first ones to leave. When it comes to July, it will occur to you that you don’t hear it anymore and the earliest ones will already have started to slip away, back to Central and South America.”
Jeff Jackson not only knows his bird calls, he understands how important it is to enjoy them in the moment.
“This is gonna change. Now we hear birds, that’s the dominant sound of this season. And if you come back in six or eight weeks, this’ll be gone because we’ll have a heck of a time hearing these birds because the airwaves will be taken over by insects. Cicadas during the day and katydids at night and you just couldn’t record a bird if you wanted to.
ambience: Katydids
We’ll continue our walk in the Georgia foothills on the next program. To hear some of your favorite Pulse of the Planet programs again online, please visit nationalgeographic.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by DuPont, bringing you the miracles of science, with additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I’m Jim Metzner.