I decided to go on the sound walk around my neighborhood in the Bronx. Since my neighborhood is very residential, with only houses around, I thought a walk around here would be interesting since it is typically quiet. I decided to split my walk into two walks of half an hour each. I went along the same route, just at different times of the day to see if there was any change in sounds.
My first walk was on a Wednesday around 10:00AM. The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of my house was the sound of the wind. It was a low, soft sound. The slight gusts of wind were producing another sound that came from the trees. The sound of the leaves rustling in the wind was a bit rough. It sounded like a slow crackle noise. The rustling leaves continued all throughout my walk. The wind also created another sound which was louder than the leaves but pleasant. This sound was that of various wind chimes hanging on the porches of some houses. The wind chimes created a sort of music that accompanied me on my walk. During my walk I heard about five different chirping sounds from birds. Some chirps were lower than others and some were further than others. I have never actually taken the time to listen to my surrounding nature, and to realize the differences in the chirping sounds of birds was very interesting to me. There were a few loud noises that occurred during my walk which were not the result of nature. The first was construction noises from work being done on a house. The noises I could identify were hammering and drilling. These noises were loud and distracting. It was a continuous banging and buzzing. I then heard a loud noise from down the block that turned out to be two leaf blowers in someone's yard. It was a very mechanical sound with the loud humming that always tends to come from machinery. The most common noise was that of cars driving by on and off randomly. You could hear the engines as they zoomed by.
My second walk was later on in the same day at around 7:00PM. During my night walk I found only a few differences in the surrounding sound. The only sound from nature that had changed with the time of day was that of chirping birds. At night there was no evidence of birds being around. The other noises that were no longer present were the construction noises and the leaf blower noises. This was definitely due to the time of day, because when the noises were present it was at a time when most people were not home and would typically be at work or in school. I noticed that at night residential areas such as my own are much more quiet and relaxing. It seems the differences in sound between times of day are very much a lack of, rather than new sounds.
