My grandmother is aware I’ve recently gotten into birding and sent me this link to a webpage with an illustration of song birds and when you click on each bird their individual songs will play. It’s well made and I recommend taking a look! It was posted by the Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources, but I’m wondering if there may similar compilations of song birds and their calls specific to other areas? I’d love to see one for Florida where I live now.
But when I clicked on the Black-capped Chickadee and listened to its call, I distinctly remembered hearing that same vocalization when I was growing up in upstate New York. As a child I thought that its fee-bee call sounded similar to the squeaking of my swing-set. It was so lovely to hear it now and remember my time growing up near the woods and nature.
Does anyone else have stories of nostalgia when hearing or seeing organisms today?
I have heavy nostalgia when hearing Bachman’s Warbler calls, despite it being possibly extinct. When I was younger, my grandmother used to have this huge garden. It was like a rainforest in the middle of muggy Mississippi. I always loved seeing robins, blue jays, chickadees, cardinals, buntings, vireos, etc. But the one sound I always woke up to were crows and a distinctive song. Over time the sound slowly faded and I haven’t heard it since 2012-13. Despite not being seen living in the U.S. since 1988, that sound is unmistakable to me. I’m still holding out hope that there’s a relict population somewhere.
As for non-birds, I always have nostalgia when I see female Eastern Swallowtails. Raised one when I was in 2nd grade. First time I felt really connected to nature, so that seems to have stuck with me lol! Also skunks, because of this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42004011 40+ within a week or two. Didn’t feed them, they just stayed around. Possibly because the forest behind my house was getting cleared, unfortunately.
That sounds really cool! Probably would be helpful when identifying bird sounds on iNat, although you’d probably have to listen to each one over and over again to be able to ID verbally.
For me, the animals that conjure up the most nostalgia are Mourning Doves and Carolina Chickadees, along with green tree frogs, and a good number of cicadas, such as superb dog-day cicadas, scissor grinder cicadas, and hieroglyphic cicadas. They remind me of long summers, bright days and humid nights.
Spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer ssp. crucifer) remind me of late nights lying awake as a child. They called in the wet part of the pasture next to the forest, which was the part of the pasture closest to my window.
My favorite time of the year, especially when I lived in places that had cold winters. I do love cicada sounds for that reason. But growing up on the New England coast, I also have nostalgia for the cries of gulls, especially against a backdrop of waves.
We had Whip-poor-wills in a small wooded patch in the back of our garden. My dad would take me up back to listen to them, and he would explain about them. They’ve disappeared–and have been gone for years. They seemed so common when I was a child that I didn’t think they’d ever vanish. I haven’t heard one in twenty or more years, but I wish I could. It would remind me of those summers and my dad.
Red-winged Blackbirds always remind me of a natural park I used to play in as a kid. The creeks are overgrown and more or less filled in now so they no longer attract the blackbirds there but the sound always takes me back to a nascent naturalist.