I got back from SXSW last night. What an amazing experience. It was awesome meeting so many people. I wish I had had more time to spend with everyone and that I had caught up with a few more people but I am so thankful for the conversations I was able to have. The sessions were great too. It is good to hear other people’s thoughts on topics and I learned some new things and new ideas as well. Not every session was a home run, but there was something to get from each session (and more than a few I want to catch on podcast.)

Hopefully some of the thoughts and ideas that were triggered by SXSW will come out as posts in the next few days, we’ll see how that works, but one thing that struck me the first night I was wandering around was the grackles.

We left our hotel Saturday night to head to the parties and I was struck by this sound – it was so loud and almost mechanical I was wondering who had some mechanical bird sounds playing on the street. No, it wasn’t mechanical it was 100′s of birds in the trees all clicking and whirring and chirping at each other.

When we went back to the hotel we asked and they told us – those are grackles.

My sound recording options were pretty limited, so below is a very poor quality recording (from my blackberry phone voice recorder) but it gives you a little feel for the sound.

Grackle sounds

When we looked up into the trees they were black with the grackles.

Since I was reading the book “The Animated Menorah” to my husband anyway I thought I’d call up Utterz and record the reading. The audio is cellphone quality, but if you’d like to listen along here are all 8 Utterz in one place.

Candle 1

Candle 2

Candle 3

Candle 4

Candle 5

Candle 6

Candle 7

Candle 8