6:10 a.m. (sunrise five minutes earlier than Friday, April 9th). 41 degrees, wind NW 2 mph, humid. Sky: multiplex shades of blue and white; rose wash along the southern horizon. In the east, the first rays of sunlight gild clouds a luminous silver. Permanent streams: upper, feeling the effects of drought—slower, quieter, shallower; lower, mud bar grows by the day, rising from the bank, hooks into the current, a future source of footprints. Wetlands: worn reeds a deep yellow-brown, water levels fall, mudbanks rim the channels. Peepers speak from hidden pools, the diminuendo of last night's chorus, one trills, several others peep, nocturnal insistence softened by sunlight and hungry birds. Lower over the reeds, three mallards, a pair and an unaccompanied female. Pond: light mist drifts southeast. Song sparrows, upright and exposed, enliven the tangles on both banks, sing like there's no tomorrow . . . which may be the case if there aren't enough females to go around.
Red maple buds unfurl, a hint of October in the otherwise gaunt woodlands—a subtle inversion of autumn Color. Big-toothed and quaking aspen catkins jiggle, gray-green in the breeze. Yellow birch catkins, shorter and less robust and more yellow than those of the aspens, attract a foraging chickadee, which eats bits of the pollen-bearing anthers. A few spent tree flowers join a robin on the shoulder of the road.
DOR: spring peeper and red eft
AOR: robin, foraging for exposed worms. Four slugs headed west. One eft, in transition to newt, on its way back to the marsh.
My walk begins with the hoots of a barred owl, double-barreled enthusiasm out of the hemlocks on the eastern rim of the Hollow; then, ends with the haphazard calls of jays, everywhere and unsynchronized. In between, brown creepers spill thin songs from maples and aspens—a brief moment of prominence for feathered scraps of bark. Chickadees: if not feeding, then whistling or being chased by a whistler . . . a species-specific unwinding of spring, a repeatable pageant, a million years running, plays to a particular audience (as well as a sympathetic observer standing of the edge of a muddy road). While chickadees perfected their two-note love song, hominids were forsaking life in the trees and for life on the savannah, fur bristling between their toes.
Chickadees cheerful and provocative as ever, my black-capped lifeline throughout an arthritic year . . . long may they sing, long may they carry on. And long may we find them endearing.
I love your musing on the timeline of the chickadee's song and furry-footed hominids descending from the trees. I write this from Quechee, VT where I'm visiting my daughter and her family and where each morning at daybreak, my 6 y o grandson and I go out into the back yard to experience the Dawn Chorus. It's so wonderful. We hear phoebes, robins, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, song sparrows, red-breasted nuthatches and drumming from an unseen woodpecker. Thank you for the inspiration, Ted.
What a joy it will be for your granddaughter to learn of the chickadees from you. As you say, may we always find them endearing, and pass that gift on to future generations!