April 9, 2023: Spring Overture

Happy Easter!  

And with Easter came the early sounds of spring.  It's just the opening overture before the full spring musical arrives, but the early spring songbirds are here and they are singing the opening of the first act as the spring migrants are arriving now in droves.  This week I saw an eastern phoebe, a brown creeper, a song sparrow, a few great blue herons, several robins collecting nest material, a flock of over two dozen American black ducks, and the first pair of mergansers. 

A pair of common mergansers fishes in a sliver of blue water.

Most exciting to see was the brown creeper, a small bird that mostly keeps hidden in dense forest as it creeps up and down tree trunks looking for insects. 

A song Sparrow and a brown creeper glean seeds as the snow recedes.

Brown creepers are resident year round but I only hear them in the summer, and only once or twice have I been able to follow the song to actually see the bird.  But here in spring, there was a single bird collecting leftover seeds below where the feeder had been.

Brown creepers have a long, down-curled beak that helps them probe into bark crevices in search of insects.

The birds are relegated to finding leftovers now that the feeders have been removed for the summer as bears are up and on the prowl, very hungry, and bird feeders are a strong attractant to unnatural habitats.  

The first heron that I saw came flying in low over the still frozen lake and plopped itself down on the shoreline in front of a gap of five feet of open water.  

Just moments before this we thought we saw a duck sitting on the ice near this stretch of open shoreline, but when we looked closely we realized it wasn't a duck, but in fact was a mink.  The mink tramped around on the ice a little bit before sliding off the ice into the water and swimming along the shore out of sight.  But when the heron flew in, that obviously caught its eye because the mink swam right back up that sliver of water and stopped at the edge of the shoreline right in front of the heron.

You can just barely make out the mink to left of the tree reflection in the water.

Upon reaching the shore, the two of them had a stare-down.  

I'm pretty sure a heron wouldn't go after a mink, but less sure that a mink wouldn't attempt to grab a heron, though I think once it encountered that pointy four-inch beak it would regret that decision.   But we won't know because that heron decided there were other places to fish and it flew off to a less crowded fishing spot.

Strong April sun and a brisk northwest wind on Friday started to break up the ice with large cracks forming miniature icebergs.  A few more warm days next week and we may be getting close to ice-out.  Ice-out on Winnipesauke was called on Friday, April 7th.

The ice started to break up on Friday.

Yes, it's the dichotomy of spring.  Remnants of a frozen winter,

A snow-covered trail on Arbutus Hill.

slowly melting away into a liquid spring,

Spring snow melt cascades down a stream in the Hamlin Town Forest.

which the trees soak up to resurrect their eternal life.

Red maple buds getting ready to burst on the next warm day.

I also had a report of spring peepers being heard just south of the Lakes Region.  (Thanks GP!)  That always adds a fine soprano voice to the spring orchestra!