Of rain frogs and fog horns.
The frontal wind emulates the sound of an approaching underground train, leading to waves of rain. Cape Town’s winter weather washes the woods behind Lion’s Head, leaving it dark, dripping and quiet. Then one wakes to beautifully clear and optimistic calls.
At first, it sounds like a nightjar. A comprehensive search in my brother’s 1970 edition of Robert’s Birds of South Africa ended that idea. Eventually, Carl Linnaeus’s 1758 scientific description made sense: The Cape Rain Frog.
The tiny 45-millimetre unhappy-looking frog loudly appreciates a fresh world when winter rain has dusted off the woods in Camps Bay’s Glen. Breviceps gibbosus is unattractive and more akin to a skin-affected blowfish than a traditional frog.
It also can’t swim. These beasts burrow in mud, but when it’s time, the males synchronise their duets impressively, seemingly knowing when the responder will react before making the call. The sound starts and stops in perfect unison — no hesitation.
Unlike foghorns.
Camps Bay’s natural amphitheatre gives one a front-row seat to a cacophony of mournful sounds on misty nights. Naturally, being awake makes one think.
Do they use a challenge and response procedure, or does every bloke just blare away?
Don’t these boats have radar or at least friend-and-foe transponder systems?
Where do they train? Soundproof classrooms or demarcated sanitised areas in the harbour?
Are sailors issued with foghorn ratings and their licenses appropriately endorsed?
Is there a foghorn manual? Maybe, The Unabridged and Revised Handbook for Foghorn Use in the Maritime Context.
The boat crews must take a leaf from the Cape Rain Frog’s book. They can but aspire to the little toads’ perfect synchronisation.
(Rain frog image courtesy Leon Kriel and Dave Pepler)