Our Environment: “An Early Delight of Spring” By Scott Turner
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Last Saturday was possibly the first spring-like day of 2019. That morning, a warm sun enveloped a snowy landscape, as the air temperature rose into the 40s.
I visited a local parkland forest, where heavy, wet, melting clumps of snow and ice fell from tree canopies. Each impact produced a crunching noise in the understory. These swishing and whooshing impacts sounded like creatures—from deer to squirrels—were rustling around in the woods.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTMeanwhile, for the first time in a few weeks, I saw some snow-free ground. On that patch of exposed soil and leaf litter on the edge of the forest, two American Robins tossed leaves in search of food.
The air contained a pre-spring smell—the fragrance of thawing soil, exhumed from icy tombs.
My ultimate destination was a lone shrub, a small tree growing in a modest cove where freshwater from the summits west of the Seekonk River mingled twice a day with salty estuary water that rushed in with the tides.
The little tree was a pussy willow, with its crown of skyward-pointing branches adorned with tight, soft, silvery tufts. These were the shrub’s pre-bloom flowers, a velvety coating of shiny hairs that insulated the blossoms from late winter cold.
This lone pussy willow was sacred space for me. I stood by the tree, while I also listened and looked for birds and other activity; otherwise enjoying the feelings stirred by the budding of a new season.
As I stood there, a Belted Kingfisher, chattering diagnostically, flew past. A Belted Kingfisher is a bird that eats little fish. It is a species of open water—ice-free water—and its presence in the cove suggested that winter was indeed melting way.
From my perch, I could see into corners of the shoreline. Not 200 feet away, I spotted five Red-breasted Mergansers, fish eaters and boreal-forest breeders. The birds—one male and four females— appeared to engage in a coordinated surfacing-and-diving routine that reminded me of synchronized swimmers.
Now the air smelled of salt, a scent of the sea. From where I stood, I could also four Buffleheads, relatively small ducks that also breed to our north. This quartet conducted a mating ritual of head-bobbing and low flights by the males over the females.
From the hillside came the call and rat-tat-tat on a tree trunk of a Red-bellied Woodpecker. A Tufted Titmouse sang, “peter, peter, peter;” a Mourning dove cooed; and a Carolina Wren chattered. Very close to where I stood a Song Sparrow sang so softly that the bird looked like it was chatting with itself.
Using my binoculars, I watched a small flock of birds flit around the cones and catkins of black birch trees on the forested slope. The “potato-chip” call of American Goldfinches was clear. So were chattering “chit-chit” calls that sounded like the flock notes of Common Redpolls, which are a visiting species of winter finch.
Suddenly, the thud of heavy wet snow and ice hitting the forest floor shook me from my contemplations. That sound, I realized, was the reverberation of winter crumbling all around me.
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
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