Drone

Maybe it was the last warm summer day of 2012. I took a longer walk up and around my favorite hill, enjoying the warmth and the silence - nobody was around and sometimes I need to be completely alone to find myself.

There was no wind and it was very quiet, except for some faraway birds and some crickets. I stood and scanned the far horizon when I became aware of a very quiet, almost inaudible high drone - and of a cloud of several dozen tiny insects that circled around and above my head.

I don't know why these insects flew around me - they didn't settle on my skin and they seemed completely harmless. They liked me for some reason, and they stayed with me for about 15 minutes. They were very small and very fast, tiny dots, barely visible against the blue sky. I couldn't believe my ears - I don't think I have ever heard something like this before. Unexpected and magical!

I found that the swarm of insects reacted to my movements - I could raise a hand, and they would back up a little bit. For some reason, the pitch was higher when they were close, and it went down immediately when they went further away. Eventually, they flew away, and the sound vanished into silence.




I did not have a recorder with me to record the sound, and the insects were very quiet, almost inaudible, the recorder wouldn't have recorded much. Here is a recording of a swarm of insects inside of a hedge behind my house, recorded in 2007. I sped the recording up to give it a pitch that was like what I heard today. It sounds a bit different (that sound was much more steady and quiet), but you can get an idea.