I live in a VERY rural part of the US. When I was in college, a friend from NYC came to stay with us for a week in the summer.

He brought a noise machine because he figured it would be too quiet.

He ended up buying ear plugs because the bugs and birds were so loud at night. And he grew to hate whippoorwills.

I enjoyed that quite thoroughly.

I live in a rural area. In summer I typically sleep with the windows open for fresh air at night... then wake up at dawn to close them because the birds are loud as hell.

My parents have a wren that nests outside their bedroom. He has decided that the best way to sing is hanging off the window screen and pointed into the bedroom. It's amazingly loud as the sun comes up.

I feed him because it's also hilarious.

Owls can be surprisingly loud, and annoyingly persistent.

We have a m-f pair of great horned owls that live in the trees behind the house. Wild how loud they get at night as they’re patrolling the neighborhood together.

I get barred owls around my place and they give me the creeps. Something in my subconscious knows they would eat me if they could

Try living in a forest that has howler monkeys. You really can't sleep through it.

I grew up in the country & enjoy the sounds mostly. Except the time I was camping and there was a whippoorwill nearby; I was just about crazy by the time the sun came up

Watch a video of one on YouTube... wtf... it the platypus of birds! What is up with its mouth?!

Nightjars are terrifying.

> He brought a noise machine

Is that slang for a radio?

No, a white noise generator. May also generate other sounds, e.g. babbling brooks, rain on a roof, or other similar things.

Oh I see. There are thousands of youtube videos for that.

> Nature can be extremely loud.

And that's kinda comforting. "Extremely loud" is the exception anyway.

It's when nature falls silent, or people-generated noise drowns out everything else, that's distressing (or depressing).