From a New York Times guest essay by David George Haskell headlined “The Birds Are Singing, but Not for Me”:

Animal sounds are my connection to the changing seasons. Every week, a new voice appears or fades. Early winter arrives with the chip of juncos. The chitter of nestling bluebirds signals the onset of summer, closely followed by the first cicadas.

This year, though, the yearly cycle was missing a voice. In that absence, I learned something about my creeping deafness and, beyond, the Faustian bargains that our ancestors struck with evolution.