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| The Fairy Falls at Emerald Pond |
This Earth Pilgrim now finds herself in mid-May, the year's Wheel spinning joyfully forward. It's my first Spring here in Lightspring Glen, and oh! what a Season of delightful (delight-full) discoveries everywhere in this wondrous new heart-home.
With Spring now in earnest unfolding, my woods-walks got me thinking: in addition to the voices of all the wonderful birds, Spring certainly also "sings in greens". Every year at this time of leaf-bud and tender new leaves, the overnight greening of fields and lawns, I go around for days stunned by the infinite shades of green, each one luminous in the sun's strengthening light. It's an amazingly vast palette that delights my eyes and fills my senses. And though I often try, my best writing efforts prove inadequate to offer a fitting description of this visual feast.
It's a water-rich landscape here with the three ponds and marshy areas. So as warmer weather approached, I'd been eagerly anticipating a marvelous chorus of Spring peepers. Possibly my favorite sound of Spring. Oh my, yes! Mild nights in the last weeks have offered fabulous Peeper-concerts often with accompanying deeper voices of their newly-awakened frog cousins. The warmer the night, the more harmonies added. There was a particularly raucous set of frog-singers right here in Hemlock Pond by the house. Then one afternoon, a Great Blue heron happened by along with a kingfisher. Together they made considerable in-roads in that frog population. I was a reluctant witness to their teamwork and tried to bear in mind that Nature has her ways, a Mystery I had to accept :::sigh:::
Once the snow-melt ended the waterfall's song had become fairly muted. But last week's heavy rain brought it roaring back. So for several days the air was filled with the cascading rush of water tumbling down the falls and down through the Glen. Only the crows' calls could be heard over the silvery din.
And bird song, not counting the crows (!) ...where to begin? Newly returned to the countryside, as with the Peepers, I was eagerly anticipating the Spring calls of returning birds, those that stay and migrants who pass through lingering only a short time. But it was a chilly April and so a slowed arrival for many. At last temps climbed and literally overnight the woods filled with their colors and song! One morning I was wowed by a flock of migrating warblers darting about in the hemlocks like so much confetti, bright yellows, blues, blacks, whites, rusty browns. They've moved on to their summer habitats in the Adirondacks and further north. And while I could go on and on about the birds that are settling in here, for this post a list will suffice: robins, flickers, Song- and chipping sparrows, a pair of hummingbirds, catbirds, orioles, tree swallows, grackles, an amazing number of ovenbirds, and in the deeper woods the shy, enchanting Woods and Hermit thrushes. The "locals" have made room, the chickadees, juncos, Mourning doves, Blue jays, nuthatches, and wood peckers. Birder that I am, I am easily distracted from my "other" work hearing a new voice and rush to catch a glimpse. And just when I thought I couldn't be more thrilled, one morning last week there on the lawn was a pair of Indigo buntings! They didn't even seem too concerned when I went quietly out the kitchen door to capture a photo. They've appeared several times and how marvelous to think they're looking to settle in for the season here at Lightspring Glen.
So with Spring in full and fabulous force, is it any wonder that when people ask how things are at my new place, my response is, "I'm living in Paradise!"
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