Critter Cacophony or Concert?

It took a few days to get used to the "music" of Talpa, where I spent my first week in the Jordan cabin.  Large, loud birds (crows, ravens, and magpies) would fly over, scaring me half to death with their sudden, rude outbursts. 

There was some kind of bird whose insistent, annoying call sounded like, "BLACK ARROW SPEAKS! BLACK ARROW SPEAKS! (Who, I wonder, is or was Black Arrow? And what was he talking about?)

This beautiful, stray cat came visiting.  It was friendly enough to sit atop my coyote fence and let me take its picture.


Somewhere a cow bawled to be milked. Someone was chopping wood. Packs of dogs roamed freely everywhere. And I don't think they ever stopped yapping, barking, howling. "Sing, little doggies, sing!" 

Roosters all over the adobe-studded landscape came into full voice around dawn, urging their hens to get their fannies off the roost and into the nest boxes to lay some eggs.  Of an evening, they would call out, "Well done, ladies," to their admiring hens, as they all came home to roost for the night.

By the end of my stay, these farmyard noises had mellowed into something I could actually miss when I moved on to my second week's rental --- closer to town, where the traffic noises took the place of these more natural rural sounds.