Wildlife’s Countless Seasons
OK, enough classroom. Let us get out into the green, or into the brown or the white, as the case may be. One convenient method is to let the seasons be your guide to watching. Yet any naturalist knows that spring, summer, fall, and winter are but crude approximations for the rhythms of wildlife. Animals offer us innumerable seasons. The warming days in March, for example, inaugurate the season of jumping snow-fleas and rocketing American woodcocks. Rains in April stir lascivious amphibians from their underground slumbers, followed soon by black bears and their cubs. Warm winds in May bring waves of migrating songbirds. In June, at night, our fields and wet meadows glow with flashes of soft yellow and green as lightning bugs take flight for their own season of courtship. You get the idea. Pick a date and go outside.

For now, however, the vernal equinox shall be our starting point on a tour of but a few watchable wildlife highlights through the year. This is, after all, the season of exploding wildlife desire. So set your compass in the direction of comical clucking and raucous peeping. The vernal and the carnal are now comingling in a woodland pond near you. Vernal pools, fed by snowmelt and rainwater, offer critical habitat for an unusual community of wet critters–frogs, salamanders, turtles, fairy shrimp, fingernail clams, and various elegant insects.

Great blue herons bring a sense of nobility to the salt marshes and estuaries they frequent. Photo: Adam Bronstein

Wood frogs (the clucking) and spring peepers (the peeping) are in these pools for courtship and breeding. Nope, that male wood frog is not locked in a perpetual Heimlich maneuver with (and apparently drowning) that female; he only wants to be near her when she releases her eggs so that his sperm gets to them first. Undaunted by all the commotion, and a celebrity in these ponds, is the spotted salamander, slick black with highway-paint-yellow spots. These “mole salamanders” migrate on rainy nights from underground burrows to vernal pools. So stay up late, get wet, and shine your flashlight judiciously.

After amorous amphibians, a vernal wildlife watcher usually moves to backyard birds. Little else in nature can match their accessible blend of music, color, grace, and flight. And flapping north soon will be one of nature’s greatest spectacles: spring migration. Although the show peaks in May, when our most colorful and musical songbirds arrive from the tropics or pass through, April in the Northeast is a fine month for beginning birdwatchers. The bird diversity isn’t yet so overwhelming and the leaves have not fully emerged to block our views. Arise at dawn and start with the common neighborhood species. Wetlands, ponds, and forest edges also tend to be good locations for beginners. Common loons are arriving to ponds now unlocked from ice, herons and egrets are prowling our marshes, hermit thrushes are performing their ethereal fluty songs, and feathered fireworks are erupting from the crowns of ruby-crowned kinglets.

Stealth on your part is particularly critical for watching birds. But silence isn’t always the rule. Some birders repeat a harsh “pissshh-pisshh-pisshh”–a bit like an annoyed, “shushing” librarian–universal bird parlance for danger. Pishing vaguely reproduces the scolding call certain songbirds make when a predator–an owl or hawk, for example–is lurking. The scolding’s intent is to alert other birds to the threat. Rather than flying away, inquisitive songbirds often come in to have a look; if you’re doing the pishing, they will come in to look at you. When pishing, be patient, give it a few minutes, and resist the temptation to get too close. And do not overdo it, especially during June, when songbirds are busy raising young. Once the birds respond, lay off the pishing and enjoy the show.

Perhaps you’re not a morning person. Consider watching insects instead. This glittering spectacle typically begins at 10 a.m. or so on sunny days from May through October. And with a new suite of field guides, insects have earned their rightful place in the kingdom of watchable wildlife. Many people now watch butterflies, dragonflies, tiger beetles, robber flies, and other insects through close-focusing binoculars.

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