This morning...

...I was up just before 4 am...

...put my processor on, and opened my door to the garden to this literally racket of sound. So this was the dawn chorus.

I sat on my swing with a coffee, listened and went into the sound. It was almost like the birds were celebrating waking up, being alive, communicating all at once. It was a joyous sound, but no way I could differentiate the various sounds within. I didn't try. There were hundreds or thousands of bird voices.

I listened until dawn caught the wisps of clouds alight with red. Then gradually the cacophony subsided somewhat and more individual sounds came through.

By 6 am there are much more individual sounds. However, I realised I had no chance of identifying the different ones. Neither would a hearing person I imagine.

The collared dove was the only one instantly recognisable, partly because it kept flying over.

But all the other birds remained hidden from sight.

So I turned to my phone and looked for bird apps. The first one although extensive wasn't exactly useful to me. Then I stumbled on one called ChirpOMatic, where you point the phone in a direction, press record, and a few moments later it gives you a list of suggestions, and some likely ones.

So this was me playing for the next few hours until my phone battery died. And then I went back to bed, exhausted!

I think I can extrapolate the blackbird now. I downloaded another app called Chirp, and that helped me further. I can recall blackbird's alarm call, but am not certain off hand of the call it makes...I keep having to check it up.

It kept telling me there was a wren (among other birds) in the near vicinity. I have seen a wren in the past in my garden. Was that the noisy bird I was hearing? Then suddenly I sneezed and in the undergrowth was this noise which turned out to be fluttering/beating of wings against leaves as the little wren shot out to safety!

I won't bore you with the rest of my discoveries this morning! But I enjoyed this, and I will be up early tomorrow again!

This is far more than I could have hope for with this re mapping, although there is still a large amount of work to do on my part.

Then figuring out some older equipment I have which I bought when I first had the implant 7 years ago, and more stuff I bought over the years to see if it would help listening and doing stuff (I had assumed I would hear more with it and be able to do more). The stuff ended up in a box after a lot of trying. So fishing it out again to see what is compatible.

I found something that I had used as a loop, but realised there was some more stuff/connections with it. No proper detailed instructions, just some basic stuff. I charged it. It said to pair with device. That was it...how? And where were these bits meant to be plugged in. I tried to look online but lost patience.

So for the next hour I am trying every combination known to the human race, connections, pairing...sticking pins in holes with double press, single press etc. I don't have a screen to use to do this pairing, I only have a very basic remote for my processor. So I am trying to pair device with remote and device with processor. (Yes I could have waited to my next appointment and asked the audiologist, but that is weeks away)

Suddenly the processor is flashing blue...does this mean pairing? So put processor on, plug the device into the radio CD player which is mains operated. Put CD on and it is sending music directly through the air (I think it is called wireless) into my processor which is a vast improvement to trying to listen to CD player normally. Better sound. But if I walk out of the room the sound cuts out or is intermittent. Is this normal? It is annoying and frustrating. And also means I am stuck in the room where the device is. So thinking cap on...

...and more experimenting seeing if it works with portable devices...iPhone and Nexus. Everything turns out to be compatible, so this means I can be mobile with this device now, listening directly to the sound, and have spent the afternoon in the potting shed listening to an audio book and reading the book at same time. Eyedrops galore needed (my eyes went on strike).

But out of 10 audio books I downloaded, two were women's voices and I couldn't make out a word of what they said even with the words...sound was too blurred. Out of the other 8 which were men's voices which generally seem to have more of an edge than women's voices, there was only one I could follow the spoken words as long as I had the written word in front of me. The others lost me.

So more downloading tonight ready for tomorrow.

Magnet in my head is a bit sore now with the vibrations of sound going in. So turned sound off now to give my head a rest, but I think my brain would happily continue. I need to do my picture for today.

I am greedy for sound now. I so want to put the (sound) processor back on.

I needed a picture today for my challenge and to be honest I have absolutely no interest in painting or drawing now. But I did set myself this challenge of a pic every day in 2017. So sat in garden with a fountain pen and pad. Popeye jumped on the paper and made a mess of it. So I drew Popeye. Then although the sun has just come out before it went to bed, I am wondering why I am feeling fine rain, then I look at my picture...so the watery effects are courtesy of the evening rain and I used a dry paint brush to spread the rain on the painting.