Harbingers of Spring

I always loved spring, and, of all places I called home, South-Western Wisconsin has most to offer in this department. It's true that the winters here, much like the no-nonsense Midwesterners, mean business, but, for that matter, so do the springs. By May, spring kicks in full blast, as every fruit tree in the state - still drab, gray, and naked less than a months ago - suddenly dresses up as if for a prom.

The spring, however, arrives here much earlier than that, at first treading carefully in early March, then growing more confident day by day, as the snow recedes, the mud - the inevitable by-product of the thaw, dries up, and the lawns gradually begin to sport more and more green.

The spring's vegetation too goes through its stages, from the gray and naked of early March, to the swelling of the brown buds closer to the beginning of April, to the first showing of that delicate golden-green down on bushes right after Easter (not this year!), up until the May crescendo.

Up until this year, the spring for me never really began until I saw the first crocus pop its curious nose from under the ground and the greening of the lawns. This year's spring was different, however, and, in fact, I've never anticipated or savored spring with more intensity. What made it different this time around was my sudden but strong fascination with birdwatching.

It started with the deer carcass in November. You might not think of it that way, but a deer carcass, stripped of the head, limbs, and loins but still covered with a thick layer of fat, is an endless feast for woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees. By spring, they literally strip it clean until all you see is the ribcage. (It works in the same way as suet, providing the protein and fat for the birds who supplement their diet with insects).

Following my mother's-in-law advice, we placed our butchered deer's carcass in the rainier cherry tree in the front yard. It didn't take long before I began seeing black-and-white, sparrow-sized downies working away at the carcass and got accustomed to their chipping calls. Encouraged, I put up feeders with mixed seed, and I was soon visited by chickadees, nuthatches, red-bellied and hairy woodpeckers, bluejays, and my very favorite bird of all - the red-hot male cardinals, and their more subtly dressed, pink-tailed female companions, sporting orange-red beaks as if it was lipstick.

That Christmas, Jacob has presented me with the Audubon's bird guide, a tube feeder, and a bag of nyjer thistle seed, that attracted the flocks of sweetly-warbling goldfinches. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And it was the birds that gave me the first hints of the spring's arrival long before the (hopefully) last April blizzard. At first, the goldfinches, clad in their olive-green coats all winter, began to show shots of lemon-yellow here and there, as they started their spring molt. Next, the scarlet-breasted house finches made their appearance one day, which, apparently, begin to frequent the feeders as the days warm up. Then I realized that, all of a sudden, the cardinals began to appear in pairs, or, more specifically, one particular pair became a regular visitor to my backyard.

And then, all of a sudden, the silent cardinals of spring, known until then only by their chipping, more musical than that of the woodpeckers, broke out into a song. It's just that one day, as I was putting up my first bluebird house, I heard a distinct birdie-birdie-birdie call that I got to know from the singing toy cardinal that I bought for my daughter but had never yet heard in nature. "Is that a cardinal singing?" I asked myself, not quite yet so sure of my bird-call identification abilities.

"The cardinals are singing now," confirmed my mother-in-law a few days later. "We gotta get the baby outside to listen to them."

The next most-anticipated herald of spring - Emily Dickison's beloved robin - appeared, just like that, all of a sudden, sometime close to the end of March. It didn't matter if the leaves on the threes were not going to appear for another month - the robins really did it for me, and they have a beautiful song! Really beautiful - heard especially distinctly in the morning as you wake up and at dusk, outside my office window.

Then came the bluebird-box fever - Jacob built and mounted five bluebird houses, after much drama and bruhaha. We see bluebirds in our vineyard every summer, it's really an ideal place for them, and so we hope they might notice our nest boxes.

Then, one morning, I saw a strikingly-looking red-winged blackbird singing from the perch on my cherry tree and have finally identified its call, which I now hear every day - it's like a spring cricket, if you will, although today they've gathered in a huge flock, as they are known to do, and screamed in the Hitchcock-like fashion from the soft maple tree right outside my front door, which I found a bit excessive.

And, at last, this past weekend I heard and saw a killdeer which Jacob has identified for me - a "shorebird" which doesn't technically live on the shore (sometimes it does), but rather in the fields, where it also nests.

All of those sounds of spring are so dear to me, I can't even say, and brighten my days greatly. Even starting to hear the crowing rooster for the first time this year, now that the chickens are finally going outside again, is delightful. What can I say, it's a great way to start the spring, and I am looking forward to seeing and hearing more spring birds in April and May - bluebirds, indigo buntings, orioles, wrens, ruby-throated humming birds, and such.