My grandmother would say, “It’s the little things in life that matter.” It may sound cliché, but she surely would have known it to be true. She’d lived through ‘the war to end all wars,’ the thirst of Prohibition, the Great Depression, a cold drink to celebrate an improving economy, another war which proved the last one’s promise was a lie, the Wright Brother’s first flight at Kittyhawk and a small-town Ohio boy landing on the moon. You might say that she’d been around the block a few times.
I was thinking about those things as I sat outside during those teasingly warming temperatures that creep into the changing season. While each year brings unseen events; sometimes good and sometimes bad, the days relentlessly move forward. By mid-March, I must look like an expectant father in a waiting room as I listen intently to the wooded wetland on our property.
There are three things that signal spring to me and I was waiting on what I consider one of the earliest harbingers. I wanted to be one of the first in the area to hear the diminutive songster’s bird-like serenade swell through the trees as it joined in a chorus welcoming the birthing of spring. The tiny spring peeper frog didn’t disappoint. Pseudacris crucifer, nature’s cross-bearer, joined hundreds of its relatives to celebrate the season of change and hope. These are my number one indicator.
Next is my favorite aerialist, the unique and odd-looking woodcock. It also goes by the name timberdoodle, a moniker I prefer because of its whimsical, but accurate, description. They’ve finally returned to the edge of my conservation field and horse pasture. I’m always captivated by the doodle’s song as he circles in his ritualistic aerial ballet and his excited chatter as he plummets to the ground. His lonely “peent” call then drifts on the breeze as he does his hopeful head-bobbing strut.
Before my third favorite is exposed, spring is well underway. Turkey vultures have made their hard-to-miss sky-gliding arrival, redwing blackbirds have returned to perches in the marshes and along ponds, fields and pastures. Bouncing on dry reeds, weeds and twigs, they flash their gaudy red epaulets while singing their squawking chant as prospective mates eye their antics.
Longtail ducks, once commonly named oldsquaws, pass quietly overhead on their northbound flight to their Arctic breeding grounds. A few stopped by nearby Andreoff Wildlife Area for a short rest before catching up with their friends, much to the delight of local birders.
A surf scoter, not wanting to be upstaged by the longtails, also made its stop for a bit of a breather. Unfortunately, the little scoter’s nickname is “skunk-head” and, while possibly a bit offensive to these sea-going birds, no movement is underway to boost their esteem. Its appearance seemed to draw raucous guffaws from soaring seagulls.
A pileated woodpecker, with its Woody-Woodpecker crown, exploring prospective homes, stopped to hammer its delight on the trees below our home. At 19 inches tall with an impressive 30-inch wingspan, the shy pileated is Ohio’s largest woodpecker. Its brassy, flicker-like call echoes through any woodland it visits.
Early gobblers are beginning to test their vocals and lay out their territory as gaggles of geese argue about undecipherable issues and toads croak and trill their spring greetings. Daffodils and spring beauties are just peeking out of the ground readying to display their Easter best. Wild garlic shoots bring a familiar fragrance to a field’s walk and robins have reappeared and seem innumerable.
But the number three on the list is still yet to arrive — and it’s actually a three-way tie. The gaudy large white trillium is Ohio’s state flower. It can form stunning blankets in rich woodlands. The Mayflower, whose colonized patches bring memories pouring back of long walks with my father as we searched for the last on my list, the morel mushroom. This popular fungus is a traditional delicacy that has distracted many turkey hunters from their search for their feathered quarry — including this one.
Spring is more than Ohio’s season of mud and rain and can be seen and heard throughout the countryside. It’s the season of new life; the real beginning of the new year. You know, the other thing my grandmother would say is, “The most important thing you can learn in life is perspective.” You know, I believe I should’ve listened to her more carefully.
“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
— Mark Twain
