Click here to hear “Spring Sound” less than 2 minutes long–

I’m having a rest and sitting in a red Adirondack chair near the house. My morning farm chores are done, and I can enjoy– this spring.  All the wild creatures are playing instruments for the orchestra. Hundreds of male Pacific Treefrogs are pulsing below in Big Pond and throbbing-out advertisements.  As the females prepare to accept individual notes to complete the ancient mating ritual.

A large group of various small finch chitter and chatter gayly as they feed and swing about on platform feeders hanging around the farmhouse and in nearby bushes. The finches provide the higher-happy pitch, which is as bright as the clumps of blooming daffodils in our yard.

The low-noted caw of a common raven sounds above as the large black bird flies across the farm, and a Stellar’s Jay sitting in the elderberry bush produces a creaky version of the red-tailed hawk’s scream. This raven-trombone and the jay’s scratchy old- time fiddle sounds –seem unlikely players in a spring orchestra; yet, their sounds fit in with the spirit of spring that many creatures around the wood, water, and field bring.

Humans don’t make spring sounds. We talk, laugh, cry, and scream, but we do it all the time. It’s nature that makes us notice the change in the seasons.