There had been fitful discussions recently among my group of friends: What had become of the fireflies. It was going on the end of June, and no one had seen any yet this year, nor could anyone remember seeing any last summer, though we weren't quite sure. Had we just not been paying attention? Was it another sign of global ecological catastrophe? Were our lives so out of tune with our surroundings that we had failed to notice these bugs that once so beguiled us? (One person offered the possibility that we had caused their extinction when we were kids, killing them off with an arsenal of mason jars.)

Then on the solstice, we gathered to salute the sunset on the longest day of year from a scenic hilltop on the Mohonk Preserve. Afterward, we retired to Ed and Fairlight's porch, just down the road in High Falls. There had been sightings of fireflies in the field below their house, and we had all come to confirm it.

The scene was spectacular, something you could charge admission for—as vivid as any imagined scene an animator could dream up . The trees ringing the field were stitched with blinking white lights that jumped from branch to branch and off into the meadow grass, also laced with tiny bright bulbs. The silent field popping points of light.

The next night, back home in Kingston, I spotted a firefly. Okay, three. They flew across my lawn then disappeared behind the side of the house. As I watched this paltry natural display, it occurred to me that cities do not excite the visual sense the way rural environments do; sure, one can make a case for architecture and the urban design forms, but cities are predominantly aural spaces. (They are also olfactory environments, but let's save that for another time.) Often maddening, often referred to as "noise pollution," urban sounds nonetheless create a unique sonic tapestry absent from rural spaces.

What follows are sounds I heard while sitting on my back porch one morning in late June. They are in no particular order, and I offer them without judgment as "good" or "bad," but rather as a transcription of the aural landscape of my backyard, encompassing all the noise that crossed my ears.

The background traffic noise ever-present like surf; the static hum that all other sounds usurp, compete against, or are submerged in.

The jaunty puttering of a Volkswagen bus.

The cacophony of birdsong, a shouting chorus:

a lonesome coo of a morning dove, a cliché come to life;

a sharp bark;

a high-pitched note hit over and over;

staccato twirps like the electronic gunfire from a video game;

a deep trill, like Barry White yodeling;

a disapproving cluck.

A vacuum cleaner's high sucking whine, and what sounds like bits of debris caroming off hard plastic beneath it; the sudden absence of that sound.

The percussive sameness of a dog's recurring one-note bark.

A loose muffler rattling up the street, clanging through the potholes.

The bleat of a freight-train whistle—a pedal-sustained chord from an out-of tune church organ.

The pop of a new screen door as it opens; its plosive slap as it closes.

An empty 12-ounce can dropped from a height and reporting two hollow bounces followed by a short roll.

The slap of my hand on my arm, squashing a mosquito.

The prolonged hiss of a garden hose like air escaping an incredibly large tire.

The flutter of wings close over my head.

The deep-throated engine of a school bus as it downshifts to climb the hill.

The quick, loud shouts of sanitation workers echoing between close-set houses.

The aggressive chatter of a tree full of tchrring squirrels; the splash and shiver of branches as they jump from limb to limb.

Empty bottles ringing and shattering in the back of a trash truck.

The percolating idle of a diesel engine.

A woman exhorting her dog to evacuate its bowels; the dog not barking, the  deficit of a space with a dog that doesn't bark.

Church bells, ringing in three separate churches, striking the hour like a lunatic carillonneur.