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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Bird Sounds

There are some distinctive bird sounds around our place her in Sanur.


That's a plaintive cuckoo and, though it's native to Bali, it is probably not one of the birds mentioned below



I'm not a birder so don't know anything about them other that what I hear. Sweet chirping birds and roosters start before sunrise - much like many places I've been in America. Mostly I don't recall or think about it, but two birds calls come to mind. One I call the Goldfinger bird. It's call is just like the short brassy horn rip at the opening of the Goldfinger theme song. I just pulled it up on Youtube to check and it was startlingly the same. The other I call the han bird. Han is a word for wood in Japanese and the han in a temple is a wooden board that's struck with a wooden mallet. At Zen Center and some other temples I've been in it's used to call people to zazen in a pattern that goes on for up to fifteen minutes. The pattern I'm used to is an introductory three strikes and then seven single hits followed by a rolldown that goes faster and faster with a pause then a big hit to mark the end of the first round. Five single hits for the second round and three for the third. If it's being hit for a shorter period of time then the single strikes are closer together. The han bird makes a sound just like those single hits with a few seconds in between. I've never talked to anyone knowledgeable about it so the han bird might not be a bird. Maybe it's a type of gekko. Anyway, I usually notice it when I'm walking and it makes me feel like I'm walking to zazen and I hasten my steps to make sure I'm not late. The Goldfinger birds causes me to look behind me for Oddjob with his killer derby.