light mist as we walked, raw chill in the air. grass, lush and thicker every day now, was covered in a gray mist. pines misty-green, everything softened from the rain. sky steel gray, but such birdsong from all about that the ground itself seemed to be singing. i'd imagined that we'd miss the birds' songs once the trees were cut down, but instead i hear not only the birds from our remaining trees, but even from the forest on the far side of the opened land.
a red-winged blackbird visited the ground beneath our feeder today, as did little red and the usual doves and sparrows. so good to see that our old friends are still finding their way on this land. still hoping to see our three-legged gray sometime.
peepers have been singing every night from our frog pond. from within the house, i only hear the usual predictable chorus, but when i go outside to take in the night, i'm able to hear the quieter ones that are not quite getting it right. it sounds like there are two of them, and they make funny little bubbly peeper sounds. in amongst the "dwee!", "dwee!", "dwee!" of the peepers, there erupts a sudden "per-der-der-der-dwee!" , a rising call just like the usual ones, but with a kind of bubble in his throat. i heard them like this two years ago as well, when we had enough spring rain to support a peeper population in our pond, and i wondered then and now whether these could be a different kind of frog. but because they started singing on the same night as the peepers, and because they sing the same notes, i'm guessing that maybe they are simply peepers with some mild deformity that makes it harder for them to get the words exactly right. actually, that's a little worrisome; aren't frogs indicators of environmental health, being prone as they are to develop deformities from toxins?
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