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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Robin Song

Friday, May 2

...

Yesterday we received our first significant spring rainfall, a warm, gentle, cleansing, life-giving downpour which began in the early hours of the morning and ending an hour or so before noon. As the rain was subsiding, my first thought was that this might be the perfect opportunity to photograph the mosses and lichens coating some of the rotting logs which I’d been keeping an eye on. The same logs which, later on in the season, I hoped, would provide me with a feast of tiny puffballs as they had the previous summer. So I grabbed the camera thinking I would take advantage of the special light that follows a recently ended spring shower and which serves to bring out the rich saturated colours of the forest. I called Molly, who’d been snoozing by the door, and we headed down the well-trodden footpath to the bush. As we stepped into the shadows the rain’s impact was immediately apparent. Lush green mosses in an infinite variety of textures and shades of green were everywhere as were the newly sprouted wildflowers forcing their way up through the previous fall’s mat of decaying leaves. I was delighted to discover that the small spring that I’d nurtured last fall was flowing freely again. The air was alive with the scent of new growth.

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world but where I grew up in southern Ontario there was, immediately following a spring rainfall, an occurrence which could always be counted upon to announce the joyous occasion that it was. True, there were, and are, other indications that spring has arrived, but none marks the season more joyously than the celebratory song of the robin which inevitably follows a spring shower. Certainly there are other songs such as those of the many variety of finches which are more variable and melodic, but it’s the absolute simplicity and repetitiveness of the robins’ call, the ease of recognition identifiable by even the most amateur of bird fanciers, that makes it the harbinger of spring that it truly is. And nothing brings out a robin’s need to sing more than a spring shower such as we’d had earlier that morning.

The border between my property and that of my neighbour to the west is marked by a change in vegetation, mine of much older growth, predominated by conifers - cedars, balsam fir, pine and spruce with a small percentage of hardwood mostly poplar and birch and aspen popping up here and there whereas the neighbour’s is entirely made up of hardwoods, maple being the predominant species.. The transition is by no means a subtle one as would be the case if nature had been solely responsible and is, undoubtedly, the result of intentional interference by man. But today there was another even more striking difference for as I approached the neighbour’s bush, the still silence at my back was replaced by a growing din. The sounds which drew me ever closer were unprecedented in my experience to the extent that I could barely believe my ears for what I was hearing was not that of a solitary robin or even two or three but, it would seem, dozens, possibly hundreds . But I was not prepared for the sight and sounds which greeted me upon breaking into the more open vegetation. The trees were filled with hundreds of robins all joined together in chorus, singing their hearts out. Scarcely believing my eyes and ears, I stood, mesmerized, in awe of nature’s splendour, of my good fortune to have witnessed such an event. 

As if this weren't enough to absorb, as I was relaxing on the hill by the solar panels later on, I heard an elk bugling off in the direction of a nearby meadow. Perhaps he too was celebrating the rain.


Incidentally, no sign of the porcupine again. I guess that's a good thing as I really do not want Molly tangling with one. 

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