Yesterday, April 27 I lay in bed listening to the cock ruffed
grouse thumping his presence to any hen grouse within listening
range. Charlotte had beat me up as usual and came into the
bedroom at 6 a.m. to find out when I was going to shake the
covers loose. I told her what I was doing and she informed me
how surprised I would be to look outdoors to see the ground
covered with snow.
It was then that I decided to fetch my stopwatch and time the
grouse’s drumming performance. Eight seconds were required from
the very first thump to the end of the fast "drum
roll." There is a very slight hesitation after the first
beat followed by four slightly faster but easily countable
hollow-sounding "thumps." Next come several more
widely spaced wingbeats that steadily pick up their pace until
the final roll speeds up and becomes somewhat softer in volume.
The sound of the grouse’s drumming is actually made by the
sudden concussion of air filling the partial vacuum produced by
the bird’s extremely powerful forward, upward and finally inward
wing strokes, followed by an instant reversal of the motion.
Imagine the dull popping sound of an electric light bulb being
dropped and broken. This is referred to as an implosion rather
than an explosion and is similar, on a much smaller scale, to the
marvelous sound produced by a drumming grouse. May would not be
complete in this region without this welcome woodland
"music."
Given a good diversity of habitat including mature and
semi-mature woods, along with middle to early succession woods
having plenty of aspens and scattered with unforested openings,
the people to come will thrill to this star performer whose drum
rolls echo with superiority and defiance through the damp air of
early spring mornings.
Fortunately the thin white covering of snow melted very
quickly but at the same time reminded us to not hurry with garden
planting. As to the early gardener who will never learn to wait
a bit longer into May before planting, Johnathon Swift said over
200 years ago, "...tis very warm weather when one’s in
bed." We’re inclined to believe that weather patterns
become more unpredictable and variable every year. It wasn’t too
many years ago that we experienced a killing frost on Father’s
Day (well into June!) that killed around three-fourths of our
garden including all of the sweet corn, squashes, tomatoes,
peppers, etc.
Lest one forget the snowstorm of the second week of May, 1990,
here is a stanza from one of my favorite poems, Two Tramps in
Mud Time by Robert Frost.
But there is also good news today, April 28, as I write this.
A radar program involved in tracking migratory songbirds
indicates an unusually heavy movement of birds along the front of
a huge mass of warm air being pushed northward on high winds.
I’m hoping that you awoke the following morning, April 29, to
find your yard, the trees and shrubs and feeders alive with
newly-arrived warblers, indigo buntings, rose-breasted grosbeaks,
Baltimore orioles, white-crowned sparrows, rufous-sided towhees
and others.
What a magical month May is for nature in all its beauty. My
daily journal entries for this month are always the longest of
the year. Here are a few examples: May 22, 1993 – 40 degrees F.
at 0545. Sunny and calm, Baltimore oriole singing loudly to
greet morning (and me!), grackle is here at corn every day,
suspect it’s nesting in the white spruce grove, Coopers hawk at
0630, sent blue jays scrambling (made a pass but missed), great
blue heron flew by at 0635 headed for Lost lake, Seven species
of bi rds on platform feeder at one time (hairy woodpecker,
rose-breasted grosbeak, goldfinch, oriole, house finch, blue jay
and red-bellied woodpecker). The cinnamon-tailed gray squirrel
(rusty) drank water at 0640 – hadn’t seen it for several weeks,
few gray squirrels feed here now. Indigo bunting "showed
off" in the sun – what a fantastic range of BLUES! Scarlet
tanager ate orange in full sunlight at 12:30 p.m. A male hooded
warbler was in bird bath twice at 4 p.m. Both male and female
sca rlet t anagers ate at oranges at same time.
May 6, 1995 – 40 degrees F., up at 5 a.m. to go with Charlotte
looking for birds in our five-year-long Wisconsin Breeding Bird
Atlas project –very good trip, yellowlegs, brown thrashers,
cardinals, eastern bluebirds, red-tailed hawk, lots of
red-breasted mergansers, palm warbler (first of the season),
yellow-rumped warblers, house wren, winter wren, and
white-throated sparrows. Transplanted golden glow, butterfly
bush and hydrangea from friends at home this a.m. – 60 degrees
and mostly sunny at noon – many people out and about today.
First large-flowered trilliums and wood anemones blossoming
today, planted sugar snap peas, carrots and lettuce.
May surely is a wildlife month to be enjoyed and cherished!
When it comes to seeing and enjoying wildlife, May is
the most magical month of all.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 05/03/2004.
© Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
