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Rain Birds (by Austin Enos)

Rain Birds. RAIN birds. rAiN bIrDs. Birds of Rain. Just Listen to the way it rolls off your tongue. Raaaaaaiiiiiiiin Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrdsss.

Rain birds are not actually a bird.  They are a bug that looks a little something like this…

He may look ugly, but he's beautiful on the inside

Good thing it's not a carnivore

 

(my friend found this outside his home and gave it to me when I stopped by his home with my dad)

They are a kind of bug called cicada.  They begin to “sing” (make a loud high pitched chirping noise) to let you know the rainy season is coming.

Right now is dry season so there is a lot of dust in the air and it gets sooo hot.

People say that when you first hear the rain birds, we’re just 6 weeks away from the rainy season.  It’s sort of like groundhog day in the winter.    (which is one of my favorite movies)

The first couple times mom heard the ringing noise she kept going outside thinking the neighbors smoke detector was going off.  Then she realized, hey, this is Mexico, people don’t worry about smoke detectors in their home.  It took a while and then we all figured out it was the rain birds.

The noise is kind of a high pitched ringing and a clicking at the beginning and end of each “song”.  Weird.  Everything you hear in the first video is the rain bird -all the different noises.  In the second video you can see that it gets real breezy once the sun sets.  And you can hear the rain birds too.

We are not worried about the rainy season.  We spent last summer here during that time.  It usually only rains after dark.  The thunder and lighting are awesome!  We purposely moved high up on the mountain so that we could enjoy watching the storms.

[youtube OuN95_WwgDs]

[youtube vwSwql5J5Xo]

 

{ 4 comments… add one }
  • DAD June 10, 2011, 8:59 am

    GOOD JOB AUSTIN! WHAT DO THE RAIN BIRDS EAT? ANYTHING THEY WANT! ( THEY ARE BIG).

  • Haileys Grandma June 11, 2011, 12:45 pm

    Hey Austin,
    Nice report on the rain birds. They do sound like a smoke alarm going off!!!
    Do they do that all night? You must get used to it if they do.
    Miss you!
    Love, BoBo & Gail

  • susan June 14, 2011, 8:26 am

    This was very interesting! Guess what…we have the 13 year cicadas this year. They came out about 2 weeks ago, all at once, thousands of them, climbing up the trees and hatching, swarms of them in the trees and they sound somewhat different from yours, but similar. When you are near a tree with them in it, it is deafening! If you look on YouTube for hatching cicadas, you can find some really neat timelapse videos of them coming out of their nymph stage. We were able to watch it “live”….smile. (It takes a long time, but we were coming out of a bldg after work and they were everywhere hatching….) Thanks for sharing!
    Susan

  • Ellice June 14, 2011, 7:35 pm

    Hey Austin! The first year we were there and I heard them I thought something was wrong with the power lines. I was going to call the electric company when the neighbor explained to me what the noise was! I’m sure they thought I was a crazy foreigner!

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