Jeepers creepers, winter’s back…
…in New England. But only for a little while.
March is usually quite cold here, and often snowy, although by then we can comfort ourselves with the idea that the long winter is nearly over. But this March it’s been exceptionally warm all over New England, prompting both joy and dark mutterings about global warming.
I’m not sure how far ahead of the usual schedule the flowers are, but there’s forsythia all over the place, and this is not a normal March phenomenon. And the peepers are making an awful lot of noise already, too:
This tiny frog is a seldom seen, but often heard and one of the real telecasters of spring.
These hardy little frogs spent the winter sleeping under leaf litter and logs. They are about an inch long, brown, and difficult to see in their new wetland homes. As the season progresses, each male stakes out a small, four to sixteen inch square, “territory” and sets up housekeeping.
During the breading season, this little fellow sits in the frigid water on his homestead and is heard peeping through the night. Whole marshes and wetlands come alive with a chorus of their song. The loud high-pitched peep is repeated once per second from dusk to dawn, as many as 4,500 times a night. This vocal effort is an attempt to defend his homestead area, and to attract a mate. Science has shown the females are attracted to the older males who tend to call faster. Once he attracts a lady, and she is happy with the “home”, she will lay up to 800 eggs, and when they hatch, they are a food source for birds, snakes, turtles, and fish. Those tiny frogs that survive, head for the woods to find small spiders and insects to eat.
I grew up next to a swamp. The sound of the spring peepers from the nearby swamp was a welcome sign that spring had come. Definitely one of my favorite sounds.
From spending time in Michigan, i recall the peepers for 3 or 4 days in spring, then silence in the woods and trees the rest of the summer.
Down south you get synchronized critters singing in the trees all summer long. A most wonderful sound i’ll never take for granted again.
even with the static and hiss…that music is so soothing.
The daffodils here in upstate NY are 3 1/2 weeks ahead of when they bloomed in 2007 (a year when I happened to take a dated picture.) My early little scarlet tulips, usually not seen until April, have already bloomed and gone; the crocuses are already done and gone, replaced by the blue and white April scilla spreading all over the lawn, and the red spears that will be peonies are 8 or 10 inches high. The lilacs are far, far, far ahead of schedule, putting out good-sized green leaves and tiny tight-furled purple buds we don’t usually see until well into May. All of that’s unprecedented in a quarter-century of memories of living here.
But the yellow winter aconite was right on time, blooming in the first week of March exactly when it always does, and the joyful spring peepers showed up this week, exactly when they always do — so I’m not sure just how scrambled the ordinary timetables are. Tonight, we seem to be moving back into a more recognizable version of “spring.” The forecast low is 17 degrees and the wind’s ripping twigs out of the trees. The daffodils will be just fine, but I’m worried for the lilac buds and the apple blossoms, which have succumbed in the past to frosts in May, let alone March!
Oh, and forsythia. Ordinarily, it’s too cold for it to bloom around here at all, except for maybe the six inches closest to the ground where the buds were insulated by snow from the frost all winter. Hopeful people plant it anyway, but I dug mine out for this reason years ago. This year, my house is missing out on the extraordinary spectacle of yellow fountains and fireworks in everybody’s yards everywhere, an abundance of glad yellow flowers making up for years and years when they never got to bloom at all.
The neighbors have a pond in their field. I love the sounds of those peepers; Thanks for the post.
Just as a pendulum must swing equally to either side, so too does our global climate. Focusing solely on what’s happening now can easily lead to losing a broader perspective:
The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without human CO2 emissions
GISS : February 2012 Was Tied For Coldest Since 1993
Deep Freeze Spreads Across Europe
Bitter cold records broken in Alaska — all time coldest record nearly broken
January 19, 2012 : Coldest Day Globally In At Least 10 Years