Spring peeping

It’s a sound every country kid in the eastern United States can probably identify when spring finally is sprung.

The particular sound is as sure as the sights of spring flowers popping up from the soil in brilliant colors. It’s as unmistakable as the return of robins bobbing up and down while dining on earthworms in the yard and serenading us with their spring songs.

It’s a distinct and unique sound that reminds you of sleigh bells ringing through the air, even though Christmas is long past.  It’s the sound of hundreds of chirping frogs in wetlands and swampy areas.

It’s a chorus of spring peepers.

Recently, on an afternoon walk with Papa, both he and I heard that distinctive noise loud and clear. As we walked along a path towards a pond, we passed a marshy area. But we heard that recognizable sound before we noticed the marsh down over a hill.

Spring peepers sang loudly in a chorus of chirps over and over again. And that sound definitely marks the arrival of spring in my neck of the woods.

Just what are spring peepers and why do they peep? They are tiny frogs with big voices. They primarily live in marshes, ponds, streams, and swamps in wooded areas with low vegetation where they can find  feeding frenzies of small insects like beetles, ants, flies, spiders, and even butterfly larvae.

Their peeping is actually a very high-pitched sound resembling sleigh bells and they peep because it is their mating ritual when males call out to females. Apparently, that loud chirping is an attractive quality!

Depending on the temperatures, spring peeper breeding usually begins in late February or March and lasts well into May. The female lays her eggs in still water which is why peepers are found in wetland areas.

Most of the time, they are heard but not seen, but if you do catch a glimpse of one, they are usually gray, tan, or light brown and have a lighter colored belly, but they are tiny little critters not getting any larger than an inch and a half.  One distinguishing feature is a dark X on their backs. When they peep, a bubble, the peeper’s vocal sac, forms under the frog’s mouth.

Interestingly, spring peepers are not the only noisy frogs in North America but belong to a group of frogs called “chorus frogs” for obvious reasons.

Spring peepers are a welcome sign of spring around here, especially when we have spring fever! As soon as we heard the peepers’ serenade that afternoon, we stopped walking just to listen and I took a short video of the peepers peeping, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get it to work here so…instead listen to this video to hear this harbinger of spring and then magnify it by a hundred and you’ll understand what I captured on my own video.

Just one of the marvels of spring and God’s creation. Yet another reason why I love living in the country in a place where we experience four distinct seasons.

“We want to hear spring peepers and see the green haze spreading through the treetops, and we are weary of waiting. And if we seem to be captiously impatient, that is a hopeful sign. Such peevishness is an early but dependable symptom of spring fever.” ~Hal Borland

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2021

Ahhhh…breathe it in

Take a deep breath.  Inhale and savor the sweet aroma of the first grass cutting of the season.

For me, nothing smells more like spring and summer than the scent of blooming flowers and a freshly cut lawn.

For one day last week, we experienced lovely weather here at Mama’s Empty Nest – temperatures in the mid-to-high 70’s and abundant sunshine.  It served to revive both my spirit and the landscape outside our country home.

Flowers awakened from their long winter naps and burst forth in color.  Yellow happy daffodils, white daffodils with bright sunshiny centers, pretty in pink and purple hyacinths, ruby red tulips and deep purple grape hyacinths greeted me with their coats of color and their endearing scents.  Just a couple days of warmth and sunshine coaxed our rhododendron bushes around our front porch to spontaneously burst into an array of color as well.

Our yard is a good two and one half acres of green.   Interspersed here and there a few trees stand, but they are still fairly small, so the lawn is a wide expanse of grass. (Okay, I’ll be honest – there are lots of weeds in there too, but hey, they’re green!)  With the outrageous amounts of rain we’ve endured this spring, our lawn had grown quite high, so it was time for the first mowing of the season.

Middle daughter and I set forth for an afternoon on the wedding plan quest.  When we left the house, hubby was maneuvering the trusty John Deere lawn tractor back and forth as he mowed the acreage.

Upon our arrival back home, it was dusk.  The sun was setting and providing its usual spectacular view from our surroundings.  We stepped out of daughter’s car and that’s when it engulfed us.

The aroma.   Oh, so lovely.  There’s something about the scent of freshly mowed grass that just makes you audibly sigh and know that all is right with the world.  I believe it is just another of God’s gifts to us.

That aroma heightens the senses, brightens the mood and brings yester-year memories of spring days and summer evenings to mind.   Both daughter and I actually voiced “ahh” simultaneously as the scent entered our noses.

And then we heard the sounds that also accompany spring and summer here in the country.  The peepers.

Spring peepers, a chorus of tiny little frogs who live in the marsh behind our property,  serenade us with their peeping songs.

These little guys usher spring into our area and we hear them throughout the summer as well.  They remind me of  tiny trumpeters heralding the season’s change.

We just stood there in the driveway for a couple of minutes absorbing the scent and sound, so refreshing after a frustrating day in search of wedding gowns.

We looked at each other and smiled.  And I remarked to my daughter, one of the dearest loves of my life, “You can’t experience this in the city.”

As I recall the bliss of that moment in my book of Opportunity, I’m so grateful for my home in the country on this fourth page of Chapter Five.

©2011 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com