Heaven on Earth
April 1. Forty degrees at dawn and overcast. But a flash of sunlight encouraged me to go outside before the expected rain. I was fully dressed, boots laced, umbrella hanging on my belt, when the heavens opened. April Fool, I thought, and prepared to spend the day inside, catching up on my writing. In the midst of the cold rain, the first daffodils opened.
April 2. As I set out on my morning walk up Guesthouse Trail, the sun penetrated the fog. In a few minutes it was clear and warm here. Not so in the valleys. They were filled up with fog that spilled over the lower ridges. Maybe that’s why the red-winged blackbirds flew up here to sing.
A winter wren sang briefly as I sat on Coyote Bench. I also heard the clear notes of a blue-headed vireo.
At the largest vernal pond, I found no sign of wood frogs, but on the pond bottom below a small clutch of eggs still floating in the water, I saw many more clutches of wood frog eggs.
Four hen turkeys ran across First Field Trail at the very same place I saw them the other day. Nature does repeat itself once in a while.
April 3. Sitting on Pit Mound Trail on Laurel Ridge, I watched a couple hermit thrushes fly silently downslope. One stopped to flip over leaves before continuing north.
Sitting on Shrew Bench, I watched a question mark butterfly on the ground, pumping its wings in the warming sun. Later, on Laurel Ridge Trail, a blue azure twinkled ahead of me like one of the wee fairies of Irish whimsey. A trailing arbutus bloomed and I knelt to sniff its sweet odor as I do every spring.
Coming back on Short Circuit Trail, I heard a long trill that sounded too high to be a chipping sparrow. I looked around and saw a pine warbler foraging and singing in the top of a tall white pine.
The thermometer hit 79 degrees by mid-afternoon, and more daffodils opened as the day progressed. I almost imagined I could see them opening so quickly did the blossoms appear. The forsythia was almost out too. The pink hyacinths, planted among the daylilies, were also blooming. Sitting outside on the veranda in the evening, I heard eastern towhees calling from several directions. At least one spring peeper also called.
April 4. Forty-four degrees at dawn, rain and fog. A male brown-headed cowbird and two females came into the feeder area. So did a fox sparrow, or perhaps I should say the fox sparrow.
At noon the fog thickened and then, in just a few minutes, the sun shone through it and blue sky appeared. As we ate lunch, we counted dozens of northern flickers in the yard, poking around in the ground like robins. A hen turkey also paraded past at the edge of First Field. Was she listening for a gobbler?
I headed over to Greenbrier Trail after lunch. At least two blue-headed vireos sang, and then, to my astonishment, a ruby-crowned kinglet sang. Usually, I don’t hear them until the middle of April.
Already the barberry shrubs, arbor vitae, and multiflora roses have greened up, and red maples are in full gold and red bloom. Garlic mustard has sprouted everywhere. A new study shows that it kills the soil fungi needed by maple and ash trees to grow. In front of a hedge of barberries was a cluster of native spicebushes in bloom. Natives mix with non-natives, Pennsylvania cress vs. garlic mustard, spicebush vs. barberry, red and striped maples vs. ailanthus, blackberry vs. multi-flora rose. What a mixture we have brewed.
At least all the birds are native, and they seem to have the intelligence to switch to new foods when they need to — for instance, those non-native berry-producers that have taken the place of our native shrubs that have been consumed by our overabundant deer.
April is a wonderful month for birdsong because it is a mixture of those that are staying with those that are leaving or merely migrating through such as the fox, white-throated and American tree sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, ruby-crowned kinglets, and brown creepers.
But where are the Carolina wrens? They were here until the March cold and snowstorms. Then, as I was writing these very words in my notebook while sitting on a log, a winter wren came to within a couple feet of me, calling and bouncing up and down like a diminutive teeny-bopper. It was almost as if it was offering itself as a consolation prize for the loss of the Carolina wren. A strange coincidence.
I continued my walk and looked up to see a porcupine snoozing high in a tulip poplar tree. A red-tailed hawk called, but I couldn’t see it. Cardinals sang as the wind picked up and more ruby-crowned kinglets warbled and ended with their signature “Look at me, look at me, look at me.” Then I heard the “mew” of a yellow-bellied sapsucker, migrating through on its usual schedule.
Yet the old, dried, beige leaves of the beech trees still clung to the branches, and they shivered in the breeze like miniature ghosts of winter past. New leaves should be pushing them off soon.
On a hunch, I crossed the stream at Pit Mound Trail and found the first few delicate yellow round-leaved violets in bloom. Then I sat next to the rushing stream to catch those invigorating ions. Ah! I still believe heaven on earth is an Appalachian spring! Talk about resurrection. I see it all about me and wish only to live through many more springs. To go from barren to overflowing in only a couple months continues to be awe-inspiring. And yet I usually sit alone. Even people who are retired only celebrate spring from their car windows. More and more people have less and less contact with the natural world in our videophiliac country. Even those who live in the country are more wedded to their riding lawn mowers and barbecue pits and rarely venture into the pockets of wildness beyond their acres of closely-cropped grass.
The first hepatica flower bloomed on the road bank.
Return to Winter
April 5. Twenty-four degrees at dawn and overcast. A sudden plunge back into winter and we spent the day in State College. Off-and-on snow showers melted on the warm ground and roads.
At home I looked out to see the birds mobbing the feeders and ground beneath them. The fox sparrow was still here, as well as chipping, field, tree, song, and white-throateds, but what was that sparrow? It’s head was a deeper chestnut than that of a chipping sparrow. It had gray instead of white on either side of the chestnut patch on top of its head. A black line ran through its eye. It had a pale patch below its throat and no spot in the middle of its chest like a song sparrow, only blurry streaking. Its wings were a reddish-brown. Could it be a swamp sparrow? Indeed it was. And I had learned another one of those LBJs or little brown jobs.
April 6. Twenty-two degrees at dawn and snowing this Good Friday. The snow covered the daffodils and hyacinths as more than two inches fell. The swamp sparrow was back, along with all the other sparrows and goldfinches.
I sighed and put my winter clothes on again. Then I set out into the bright sunlight in mid-morning. Would the birds I heard on April 4 still be around? Yellow-bellied sapsuckers called in Margaret’s Woods, ruby-crowned kinglets sang and foraged on Greenbrier Trail. A towhee called once. Yes, they were still all here.
April 7. I found the same birds at the Far Field as I had during yesterday’s walk in the opposite direction–several brown creepers and hermit thrushes, a quiet phoebe insect-catching from a limb, a pair of bluebirds, towhees calling and singing from all directions, a couple yellow-bellied sapsuckers, winter wrens wherever I went, and once I heard a portion of a ruby-crowned kinglet song. I also scattered a herd of six deer.
Mostly sunlight except for a snow shower that caused a complete white-out of Sinking Valley, but it didn’t amount to much when it reached the mountaintop. This unseasonable cold has spread throughout the East and Midwest and as far south as Georgia, blackening peach tree blossoms and threatening other fruit crops as well. Luckily, our own local fruit orchard owners are smart enough to plant several varieties of peaches, apples, strawberries, etc. so that they bloom at different times and luckily it hadn’t been warm enough in our area to bring out the tree blossoms yet.
I sat at the Far Field and soaked up as much sunshine as possible while the wind howled over Sapsucker Ridge.
Steve reported seeing a silent Louisiana waterthrush near the forks. Right on time despite the weather.
A single opossum came to the feeder area as it has most evenings. I always talk to it when I bring the feeders in, and it seems to be getting used to my voice, because instead of running off, it glances up briefly and then goes back to eating.
April 8. Twenty-six degrees at dawn and windy, dropping to 23 degrees by 9:00 a.m. when I went out for my walk. What a gloomy, gray, cold Easter. Daffodils laid on the ground and I wondered if they would resurrect after this incredible cold? The birds were almost silenced at dawn and afterward.
Once I heard a winter wren calling and half of a blue-headed vireo song, but mostly the woods were silent. Sitting on Shrew Bench, I did hear the faint gobbles of a turkey.
April 9. Another new inch of snow. By 9:00 it was 31 degrees, a few flakes still sifted down, but the sun occasionally shone. Birds mobbed the feeder area, including six mourning doves. One kept up his dolorous song as I headed across a mostly silent First Field and into an equally quiet Margaret’s Woods. But on Greenbrier Trail, a winter wren sang as I sat hidden back in the brush. I also heard a towhee, ruby-crowned kinglets, and a blue-headed vireo. A trio of black-capped chickadees landed on the witch hazel shrub in front of me, “dee-deeing” within a couple feet of me and flitting above my head.
A gobbler answered the hen calls I made with the box caller, and although his gobbles came closer over the next 20 minutes or so, I never saw him.
April 10. The mountain laurel looked pitiful even on the powerline right-of-way and semed to be in a free fall. Leaves on whole shrubs have turned brown and dropped. More and more gray bodies, contorted, naked branches bereft of leaves.
On Guesthouse Trail many of the small rhododendron shrubs have been recently stripped of leaves by the deer.
At the Far Field, I listened to a ruffed grouse drumming in the woods beyond, but I could not sneak close enough to see him. Eastern towhees called, along with a ruby-crowned kinglet or two. Once in a while a dim sun penetrated the clouds. When it did the birds activated. A bluebird sang briefly. Then a cardinal, followed by a ruby-crowned kinglet. I’ve never heard as many ruby-crowns as I have this spring. Usually they move on after a week or so.
See also my recent post on the Plummer’s Hollow blog.
Marcia Bonta 
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