Springtime Songs

Springtime Songs

by Barbara P. Rousseau

“Spring had come once more to Green Gables – the beautiful, capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth.”

— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Spring arrives reluctantly on Prince Edward Island. It was always in such a rush at my former Ontario homes: one day snow, the next, summer. But here, like everything else, spring is slower, defined neatly between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. Even the parade of bulbs appears slowly on the Island: snowdrops giving way to crocuses, to daffodils, to tulips, well after they have dropped their petals in other parts of the country.

But I don’t plant spring bulbs at our cottage at St. Peters Harbour on PEI’s north-east shore, and I would probably miss them anyway. For another sign of the spring freeze-thaw is mud. Thawed red clay mud that doesn’t drain, with the frost layer below. Two-foot ruts of red muck that swallows boots and car tires. It is mid-April before I can drive down the cottage road.

The welcome chorus starts about this time, sometimes even with ice still on the pond. It begins with a few timid peeps, but by May has become a full-blown choir, singing twenty-four hours a day. It’s the season of the aptly named, but next-to-invisible, Spring Peeper. Try as I might, I can’t seem to spot the tiny sources of these mighty voices. They are only an inch in length and the colour of the pond’s dead vegetation, seamlessly blending into the shadows of the shallows. The only peeper I have ever seen must have been lost, baking in the full July sun on a raspberry leaf – I had to encourage him to seek shade.

The peepers’ May chorus is gradually joined by the occasional rasp of the Leopard Frog. This amphibian is more visible at three to five inches long, but it is no less surprising in terms of volume for its size. By July, the multitude of these yellow and green spotted offspring will be hanging out on the lawn, startled into the shade under the cottage by foot tread or the hum of the lawnmower. Soon after, the roadway will be littered with frog carcasses, the summer sun having slowed their pilgrimages until they become baked on the now dry red mud of the pond’s causeway.

With the volume of the chorus, it seems difficult to believe that world-wide, the extinction rate of amphibians is one thousand times the estimated background rate of extinction. The cause – a rapidly spreading fungus – may not be of human origin, but is thanks to global human networks, with climate change allowing the fungus to travel further from the tropics. The fungus may not currently survive our winters, but with the increasing ice melt in the Arctic, I wonder how long our frogs will remain protected?

—

It’s now springtime on our barachois pond. Once a salt-water channel between sandbar and island, the pond is now cut off from the ocean and fed by the water table. Before the marsh grasses grow in, it resembles a small lake, the ripples provide a weathervane. Because spring on PEI is also a season of wind: sighing through the trees, rattling windows, whistling in your ears, and carrying the roar of surf.

The ducks and geese take advantage of the wind on the pond, riding downwind, then flying back to the other end – announcing themselves – and starting the process again. But the one who seems to master the wind – silently – is the Marsh Hawk. Officially known as a Northern Harrier – yes, the one that the military aircraft is named after – she dances on the wind currents along the edge of the pond, scanning with both eyes and ears for small rodents and other snacks. Like an owl, the Harrier’s face has a facial disc around the eyes to focus sound on the ears. A hover, a dive, success … or not. The return trip into the wind is more leisurely, tacking and hovering, always graceful. And it is most likely “she”: the male is whiter, smaller, and a rarer visitor, since he is likely maintaining families in other locations.

—

By the beginning of May, there is another sound on the air, even before dawn: the hum of boat motors. It’s lobster season on the north shore. The locals gather at the shore bright and early on Setting Day – the first day of lobster season when the fishers set out their traps – to watch the loaded boats parade out of Red Head Harbour; by the time the last boat has cleared the buoys marking the channel, the first will be back to load up with more. For the next two months, they’ll be out daily (with the exception of Sundays), hauling and throwing traps until Landing Day; there is no longer a fall season on the Island’s north shore. It’s tough to make a living as a fisher – or even to finance fishing. With the increasing costs of fuel and the decreasing market price of lobster, many fishers have alternate incomes in construction or tourism.

A hundred years ago, the lobster boats sailed out of St. Peters Harbour instead. Then, the families moved to the shore for lobster season – June until August – and everyone took part in processing the catch. But since the sands closed that harbour, the fishers have chugged back and forth across the shallow channels at the mouth of St. Peters Bay to Red Head Harbour.

As I listen to the morning hum, I wonder about the sustainability of the lobster fishery, dependent on fossil fuels and dwindling stock. Lobsters migrating north as the New England waters should be a boon to Canadian fishers, but the lack of sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence offers less protection and more churn for the lobsters, and now the mackerel used for baiting lobster traps are also in short supply.

Full disclosure: I don’t even like lobster. But the industry is unique, colourful, and key to Atlantic identity. After a while, even the boat motors become white noise amidst the increasing avian chorus.

—

I used to think that the first songbird of spring was the Song Sparrow. Later, I discovered that it was the Black-capped Chickadees, alternating a pure DEE-DO with the typical raspy, deep DEE-DEE-DEE. The melodic Song Sparrows, with the telltale spot in the middle of their striped chests, are not in residence until May. The sparrows are shy at first, darting about the marsh grasses, but gradually gain courage to belt out their trilling tales from the top-most branch of the trees at the pond edge, the most visible spot available. The smaller rust-capped Chipping Sparrows, so named for their “chip-chip” call, cautiously hop along the edge of the grass, taking refuge in the bushes at the slightest movement, or zipping under the cottage where they are seemingly nesting. Come summer, the oversized young will be trailing after their parents in the grass, loudly demanding whatever food their parents have found.

Of the small songbirds, the warblers are last to add to the chorus, arriving in time for the first Serviceberry flowers at the end of May. While the bright, streaked Yellow Warbler finds food on the spruces, the masked bandits, prosaically named Common Yellowthroat, favour the bayberries. Of course, it’s only the colourful males showing off; the dull drab feathers of the females make them next to impossible to distinguish by this casual birdwatcher, even if they made themselves visible. I may occasionally use a smartphone app to identify birds by their songs, but somehow that feels to me like cheating. I’d rather just sit and listen.

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Adding to the cacophony are the larger birds: the Northern Flicker, on its way further north, looking for ants in the dry grass, and scolding from treetops with its Kik-Kik-Kik; the year-round resident Blue Jay, with its squeaky clothesline call; the common American Robin, with its melodic “kee-woo”; the raspy Redwing Blackbirds; and the unique, aptly named Catbird. I was puzzled the first time I saw and heard this bird: it was the size of a robin, but sleeker, grayer, and with a longer tail, and it was making the mewing sounds of a kitten. Like its Blue Jay cousin, the Catbird is a great imitator, so I’m never quite sure who I’m hearing.

It’s sobering to think that if it hadn’t been for Rachel Carson and her seminal work Silent Spring – first published over 60 years ago – we may never have been privy to this chorus. Without the subsequent bans on DDT, a water insoluble insecticide that bioaccumulates up the food chain, would we have any birds that feed on the insects – like yellow warblers – or caterpillars to feed their young?

How we become like our parents. My father was a life-long birdwatcher, but his interest was more focused on the identification and classification of birds … and mushrooms … and constellations … than just enjoying them. My mother fancied cats more than birds, much like Montgomery, who, for all her description of the splendor of PEI, barely mentioned wildlife at all. But for me, getting to know the locals makes me feel a more grounded part of the place. Observing the apparent simplicity of their needs reminds me not to sweat the small stuff.

—

There is still some irritating larger “stuff” around though. Superior in size and sound are the crows, but I just can’t cotton to the cawing, croaking, contemptuous, colourless corvids. I know that they are the most intelligent and social of birds … and they know it too. They remind me of that smug classmate or colleague who is the smartest person they know, strutting about like they own the place.

In some ways, they do own the place. Crows are adaptable and opportunistic, one of the “urban exploiters” that are thriving in new environments, dependent on human food and the removal of predators. They even have a fondness for roof shingles, pecking the gravel off to help with their digestion – a new sound that is confusing and sleep-interrupting for the cottage dweller wondering what is knocking on the eaves.

Out at St. Peters Harbour, the crows start their nest-building in early spring, swooping over the roof on their way to the nearby spruce. In a matter of days, there is a large pile of sticks hidden in the upper branches, and in a few weeks, we will hear the demands of “feed me, feed me!” We will not see the youngsters, though, until they are impossible to distinguish from the parents, save for their behaviour: noisily trailing after their parents, snatching the occasional handouts.

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From the largest and blandest to the smallest and most colourful, the ruby-throated hummingbird also arrives at the end of May. Perhaps they are also coming for the first blossoms, because there are no colourful summer flowers to speak of yet. Regardless, as soon as we put the feeder out, we are treated to the hum of wings and the occasional chitter of commentary. But where one goes, others are sure to follow, and soon there is competition, zipping in and out – despite the multiple ports on the feeder, it seems that hummingbirds don’t share.

By June, the frog chorus is weakening, and other sounds start to herald the arrival of summer: the whine of mosquitoes, and the buzz of bumblebees enjoying the dandelions, violets, and strawberry flowers. It’s peaceful, calm, and meditative. At least it is until the rest of the neighbourhood wakes up and the seasonal cleanup begins: the lawn mowers, the hammers, the chainsaws, the dump trucks …

Fortunately, the human noises give way at dinnertime to the waning frog chorus, our evening serenade. Who needs the radio?

Illustration by Barbara P. Rousseau