Wild Things: Spring comes early

A bluebird. Ed Kanze Photos

A red-winged blackbird.

The spotted salamander.

By ED KANZE

Before the calendar tells us it’s spring, the season is well underway. Just about all my life, I’ve groaned inwardly anytime someone suggests that spring begins with the vernal equinox on the 21st or 22nd of March.

Let’s marshal some of the evidence that the calendar’s idea of when spring begins is wrong.

If there’s snow on the ground, it’s usually begun to melt in earnest before the equinox. Sure, big snowstorms may still lie ahead, but those are not winter storms. They’re spring storms, generally bringing wet heavy snow that’s perfect for building snow creatures and snow people, as long as you don’t expect them to last too long.

Woodpeckers drum as spring arrives. According to them, it starts in late January or February. As I write, we’re still many days ahead of the equinox, yet pileated, hairy, and downy woodpeckers are beating drum rolls on dead wood (or loose house siding boards) right and left. This is all about courtship and the establishment of territories: spring behaviors.

Bluebirds often reappear in our fields and field edges weeks before the official commencement of spring. In the days when I trudged from maple tree to maple tree in February and early March tapping trees for syrup-making, I used to listen for bluebirds to announce the season. They nearly always did, their soft burry warbles a fitting match for their pastel blue feathers and the softening weather. 

Turkey vultures, which had not yet arrived to breed in southern New York when I was a kid, appeared and stayed to raise offspring in my young adulthood. My first sightings happened on spring days in early March, with cackling wood frogs supplying accompaniment.

Speaking of frogs, two that are almost certain to join the chorus of spring proclaimers before the equinox are the wood frog, mentioned above, and its much smaller sidekick, the spring peeper. In northern New York, these amphibians remain silent well past the equinox, but in the lower Hudson Valley, they’re filling nights with music often well ahead of March 21.

Since we’re talking about frogs, we might as well address their distant amphibian relations, the salamanders. In southern New York on rainy March nights ahead of the equinox, one can often find a variety of kinds of salamander crossing roads, assuming you don’t mind getting soaked and chilled to the bone. The most glamorous is the spotted salamander. It’s big, black, and glossy, and you won’t miss the spots. They’re huge, almost comically so. This salamander looks like it’s walked right out of a Dr. Seuss illustration to a shallow fish-less pond near you.

When it comes to announcing the launch of spring, the red-winged blackbird might do a better job than any other creature. Red-wings commonly turn up in number around Valentine’s Day, sometimes earlier, sometimes a little later. This is not a subtle bird. It’s big as songbirds go, glossy black, and it reveals showy crimson epaulets when performing. It performs a lot, and is anything but a mime. When the red-winged blackbird takes the stage on top of a cattail or alder and begins its eye-catching display, it sings loudly. Conk-a-REE, it says, or something like that. Once a man at a park where I was working complained to me about the racket red-wings were making. I confess I thought he was out of his mind. To my ears theirs is  a joyous sound, one that seems to declare, “Ding, dong, the winter is dead.”

Male red-wings generally arrive before the females. They have their territories and singing posts well staked out before prospective mates turn up. The females look something like large long-tailed, long-beaked sparrows.

Spring! It comes early, but never early enough. It’s my favorite season.