Last weekend I escaped to the front porch for a few stolen
moments of solitary peace. Only they weren’t solitary – or peaceful, really.
All around me there was noise and movement. A catbird meow-called from the
highbush cranberry in the front yard. The whir of wings revealed a hummingbird
was exploring the flowers in the planters on the upstairs porch railing. The
piercing screech of a hawk drew my eyes upward, where two raptors spun circles far,
far above. They seemed too high to be hunting; just playing on the breeze.
On short evening rambles with the dog, as most birdsong
quiets with the approach of darkness, we hear the beautifully melancholic
trilling of the hermit thrush from the woods. The peepers are just warming up
then, testing out their voices for another night of singing for love – or at
least reproductive prospects. By the time I am in bed, with the windows open to
the welcome warmth of the spring night, the singing of these tiny frogs is a
boisterous, chiming cacophony, one of the wonders of nature that amazes me no
matter how many times I hear it.
The robins lead the chorus that awakens me on spring mornings
with their rambling, cheery singing. A varied choir of other birds joins in:
the question-and-answer of the red-eyed vireo, the ovenbird’s somewhat screechy
“teacher-teacher-teacher,” and the
white-throated sparrow singing, “Old Sam Peabody-Peabody-Peabody.” There are
song sparrows and goldfinches, phoebes and slate juncos – and the chickadees
and nuthatches who’ve stayed with us all year. It seems impossible that one
yard contains such a variety of birds – and birdsong – and I’m sure I’ll never
learn them all. That kind of noise is nice, anyway, whether or not I know – or see
– who’s making it.
Not all the twittering happens from tree branches or the
pond, of course. Tom turkeys gobble as they make their way along the paths
through the back field. A gang of crows yell their caw-caws at a red fox as he
meanders through the yard in the early morning, patrolling the invisible
borders of his territory before trotting off to some quieter spot.
Amid all of this noisy nature, we humans contribute to the
sounds of spring, too. The drone of lawnmowers returns to yards everywhere. Bicyclists
call to each other as they ride past in spandex-clad pairs. The hum of sporadic
traffic drifts through open windows. And if there is a baseball game at the
school two miles down the road, the cheers drift into our yard, and I pause to silently
root for the home team.
Even the appearance of spring, once the season really gets
going, is a bit noisy. The grass, finally, turns a bright, lush green. Leaves
unfurl on trees. New vegetation pushes through last year’s dieback in the
field, and lupine leaves grow higher and fuller, moving toward the plants’
burst of color – coming soon. The apples trees are blooming now, all white and
pink, and the buds on the lilacs are opening into a cascade of purple and the
sweet scent of almost-summer.
These pastel hues will build toward summer’s audacity of color, when a cacophony of blooms bursts forth from the gardens and fields. By
then, the peepers will have quieted and the birdsong will have started its slow
fade, as birds move from attracting mates and establishing territories to hatching
and feeding broods of chicks. (Who has time to sing when the kids are demanding
food all day long?)
But now, in these days of approaching summer, when winter has
really and truly faded into a cold and provisional memory, the sounds of spring
rouse me from sleep in the welcome brightness of early morning. All the noise
and color draw me into this season, growing from the last, rolling into the
next.
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the May 27, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.