The stage was set last week with the possibly last
snow already receding when a night of booming thunderstorms unleashed driving
rain. By morning. The ice that remained
on the ponds in the nearby nature conservancy was covered in several inches of
rainwater. It was a strange effect if
you stopped to consider the water underneath, a thinning layer of ice with
another layer of water on top. When the
daytime temperatures climbed into the 60’s the pond ice was doomed. Two days ago, it totally disintegrated. Literally in the morning the ice was there,
but by mid-day the pond was ice-free, and the water danced a jig as little
wavelets sparkled in the afternoon sun.
The rest of the day was silent in the marsh.
On the second day of ice-out, as the sun warmed and
rose higher, the peeper frogs struck their lead in for the symphony of
spring. The sound didn’t even seem to
build. It seemed that at one moment the
pond was silent, and the very next moment every frog in the marsh – a good
scientific estimate is approximately 9 gazillion – broke into song. It is unlike any other spring sound. Even the goose song builds over weeks as each
day more and more flight-weary geese descend, pitching this way and that on
stiff cupped wings, finally gliding gracefully onto the pond. One can only surmise that the frogs somehow
break out of the stupor of hibernation at the exact same moment, float up to
the surface, breathe in their first breath since digging down into the mud on
the pond bottom well before the first film of ice formed on an early December
night, and exhale in song.
We spent the past two evenings listening to male
woodcock, the soloists in this score, peent their raspy mating calls and then
ascend twittering into a several hundred-foot climb straight up into the late
evening sky, and then tumble in a twittering freefall; only to level off about
fifteen feet up, settle onto the ground, and immediately begin calling
again.
Small groups of pelicans, in synchronized flight offer
their aerial ballet. Male goldfinches are noticeably beginning to take on
their bright yellow summer hues. The
dance of the killdeer, though performed on the pond’s sandy shore is also
eye-catching. The sandhill cranes are
still bunched up; their bugling calls rise just before the day’s new sun.
Conspicuous in their absence are the great and the
small alike. One, like a prophet of
coming spring that I just wrote about last week, the trumpeter swans have for
the most part left in the middle of the night, continuing their journey
northward. The other, is a harbinger of
winter. The juncos arrived here all at
once last November, fleeing the heavier snows and colder days of the Canadian
spruce forests. Just two days ago they
swarmed my just-filled feeder. Yesterday
I noticed that they were gone. They
didn’t seem in any hurry to head north and seemed quite content to be
neighborly to the songbirds that returned here over the last month or so, but
finally they heard their summons and so they left – perhaps taking their cue
from the swans. But they are not so much
missing from here as they are now at home as should be.
Spiring will continue at this fever pitch for several
more weeks, but this level of urgency is not sustainable. Then the cranes will pair off, and the geese
as well and they will find a nest site of their own. Even the peepers will begin to sing only in
the evenings and warm nights, and the day’s symphony will ease into the pace of
the new season.
“The
heavens tell of the glory of God; and their
expanse declares the work of His hands. Day unto
day pours forth speech, and night unto
night reveals knowledge.”
Psalm 19:1-2
His Peace,
Deacon Dan
Photo by Noah Godderz on Unsplash
Comments
Post a Comment