My “Arena of Delight”

March is a month of hope and resurrection in the natural world. I carry hope with me as we cycle through days of cold and snow, sunshine and warmth, and I bear witness to a variety of sights and sounds during my daily morning walks.

As soon as we have patches of open field, American woodcocks return from their wintering grounds in the southeastern United States. I stand outside at dusk listening and watching as they “peent, peent,” then fly high in the sky and twitter as they plunge back to earth and start over again. But no matter how many times they perform, it is never enough, and I am outside most evenings, waiting for encores.

On early March days I stand at the top of First Field, straining eyes and ears, watching as hundreds of tundra swans fly northwest in wavering flocks like white angels whistling in the wind.

Shortly afterward, the first turkey vultures rock past, catching the breeze wafting over First Field. Those black scavengers haven’t gone much farther than southern Pennsylvania, a few no more than 20 miles from here, yet we rarely see one after mid-November or before mid-March.

March is also the official start for birdsong, although resident black-capped chickadees and tufted titmice have been singing off-and-on since late January. Still, I can expect to hear the singing of our wintering migrants in March—American tree sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, and white-throated sparrows—before they move farther north to breed.

Some birds that are migrating through the state, such as fox sparrows, also sing. Song sparrows, those that stayed and those that returned, keep up their relentless “spring is here” song even during cold snaps. But no sparrow song sounds sweeter than that of returning field sparrows and First Field soon reverberates with their downward spiraling songs.

Winter wrens that have spent the cold months near our stream sing the loveliest and longest song of all, and if we have any Carolina wrens they have been singing their rollicking song all year. Soon enough, eastern bluebirds, American robins, and northern cardinals add their songs to the mix.

It may not be a song, but when I hear the froggy-sounding “fee-bee” of eastern phoebes and see their sleek gray and white selves perching on our electric lines and flicking their tails, it seems as if spring is truly here.

Raptors too make first appearances, and on a warm March day I am treated to the sight of a pair of courting red-tailed hawks over First Field, renewing their monogamous bond by diving, screaming, and dangling their legs. As often as I’ve watched their preliminaries, I’ve never seen courtship feeding, interlocking talons or beaks, and spiraling together toward the ground during their aerial displays.

Cooper’s hawks also set up territories and call, especially early in the morning, and usually in our deciduous forest. But last March they called from our spruce grove, which has been the breeding choice of sharp-shinned hawks for years. Because the grove is thick, I only know the sharpies are in residence when I hear their warning cries or see a parent perched nearby in a locust tree as I approach the grove, and finally in August when their offspring fledge and call over and over like lost children.

American kestrels are even more secretive, and even though a male returns in early March and sits expectantly on the powerline right-of-way most March days, no female appears while I’m watching. I always hope that a pair will set up housekeeping in one of the many holes pileated woodpeckers have drilled in the power poles, as a pair did back in the 1970s, when my sons and I enjoyed watching the newly-fledged young and their parents flying over the field, but it’s never happened again. They weren’t even tempted by the kestrel nest box we erected one spring.

For decades we had great horned owls courting in January, but over the last several years, as our trees have aged, they have been replaced by barred owls. Those owls breed later than great horned owls, and although they are liable to call all year, they call most frequently here in early March before egg-laying. They even call during the daytime, and I hear them in mid-morning as well as mid-afternoon somewhere behind the spruce grove.

Mammals are also stirring. Woodchucks are out and about, even though the males trotted from burrow to burrow in February to mate with ready females and gray squirrels and foxes courted late in January and early February. Black bears rarely appear until April, but I take in my bird feeders every night once it warms up in March.

Porcupines have been active all winter, but one of the first signs of spring is a porcupine eating tree buds high in the only surviving American elm tree in our exclosure. They also graze on grass like woodchucks. The first time I observed this, I thought it was unusual, but I see this behavior every spring. They are so busy eating that they pay no attention as I walk within eight feet of them and watch as they snap off and eat one grass stalk after another. If I get too close to one, it will look up, slowly turn around, and erect its rosette of quills. That’s when I turn around and leave it to its grass banquet.

On an early March day I am sometimes lucky enough to encounter eastern chipmunks mate-chasing. Last March I interrupted a male chipmunk chasing along Big Tree Trail, and when I sat down on a large log to watch, he ignored me. A couple times a female chipmunk ran 30 feet up a tree to a pileated woodpecker hole and took refuge from her male chaser. The many fallen trees provided runways for the chipmunks and included the one I was sitting on. There the pair paused, and it was the female that zipped past my feet and escaped. Two more timorous males that had joined the chase, stopped, waited a couple minutes, took an alternate path away from me, then quickly scented the female and followed her trail. She, in the meantime, had disappeared and they did too. Unlike once years ago, I did not see the mating of the chipmunks.

To witness the culmination of a courtship that happens during March, I spend hours at our vernal pond observing wood frogs. After spending the winter freeze-dried down in their burrows, they rise and hop to their natal pond. The males arrive first by the dozens, and they sound like quacking ducks as they call while swimming in the pond.

One warm, overcast day I encounter 100 wood frogs calling and swimming in our vernal pond as I creep from tree to tree, getting close to the action without being seen. A mating ball of masked, brown, male wood frogs tumble over a larger, pink female with one of her legs high in the air. From a tiny bear wallow 20 feet away, two more male wood frogs leap out and head for the larger pond as if drawn by the frenetic sound and action.

I move closer and closer and sit to watch less than ten feet away. They pay me no attention even as they call above a roaring March wind. A few climb out of the vernal pond and sit on logs in and around the water as they continue calling, their bodies shaking with the effort.

On later days the pond is quieter and the few wood frogs left much shyer. Still, when I slowly circle the pond, in its murky depths I see large clusters of jelly-like balls filled with eggs and know that later in the spring day by day I’ll watch the metamorphosis from eggs, to tadpoles, to tiny wood frogs that leave the pond to spend their lives in the leaf litter. Only occasionally do I see a wood frog until the following March when hundreds return to repeat a sight for me that never grows old. A video by Dave captures the spirit of the wood frogs in Plummer’s Hollow.

Sometime on a late, warm, March morning the eastern garter snakes emerge from the ground near our old well. At first the smaller males move around aimlessly, but then a larger female appears and the males rush to form a mating ball around her. I watch as they tumble down our hilly lawn. Only one male will inseminate her then, but it’s difficult to figure out which one because males emerge, join, leave, go back into holes, return, and finally the ball disintegrates as the snakes slither off in all directions.

Late in March the first chipping sparrows return and the first eastern towhees call. Ruffed grouse drum and migrating yellow-bellied sapsuckers mew like kittens. My favorite season is well on its way, and I’m grateful to be alive and able to appreciate my “arena of delight,” as poet Mary Oliver says, that is spring in Pennsylvania.