By Margaret Bobalek King
April 25, 2008 07:00 am It's a perfect spring day in April, 70 degrees. At last the grass turns green! Migrating birds, back from the south, sing songs of love and territorial dominance, joyfully celebrating a new year of living in our backyard. They cry out from the massive sugar maples overarching the lawn where we hung the bird feeders that delighted the chickadees, nuthatches, two pairs of cardinals, and blue jays who stayed all winter. It seems we have something like a mini-Audubon sanctuary here in Derry with our wealth of tall poplars, pines towering to 100-foot heights, apple orchards, and tangled scrubland composed of sumac and wild blackberries, a perfect shelter, food source, and nesting place for birds every spring. We maintain two birdfeeders, filling them with cracked corn and sunflower mix, mingled with rapeseed, making birds welcome all winter, enticing their wild cousins to pause here on their long journey north in April. This morning we saw a mallard male, iridescent green on his handsome head, followed by his brightly-striped lady, fattening up beneath our feeder where stray seeds had fallen. They started coming regularly, morning and evening, in March when ice froze the pond, waiting to build their nest to raise their young soon as warmer weather cracked the frozen surface. Twice, a red fox entered our yard. The first time we saw him he was seeking the ducks. He paused beneath the feeder, his red body arrested in motion, one foot of the ground, white-tipped tail twitching. A movement at the window and he melted away. The second time, he raced across East Derry Road, a russet blur moving at 40 mph as if the hounds of hell were after him. "Did you see him move? I never thought a fox could run that fast!" said my husband, Bob. "That's why they have fox hunts," I replied. "Imagine horses and hounds chasing after a red fox who can maintain a racing pace of at least 20 mph for two hours with only a few stops to rest!" Our minds were turned from foxes this sunny, April afternoon when we set out to rake the mottled, brown leaves lying dead on our lawn from last October. As we cleaned up the mess, we listened happily to the cries of birds piercing the luminous air all around us. All of a sudden we ducked. A shadow passed over us. On great wings barely moving, there hung on the wind currents a very large bird. First one flew over, then a second, and a third soaring gracefully, yet ominous. They were turkey vultures on their way to a kill. We watched in awe as they lofted like huge airplanes floating effortlessly over our neighbor's white pines and out of sight. A flock of red-winged blackbirds settled like black coins against the sun on poplars after the vultures passed, filling the air with loud "screee-ings," a noise like high-pitched violins tuning before a concert. We leaned on our rakes to listen, hoping this orchestra of chattering song would grace our ears a little longer, but something startled them. They rose like buckshot, circled, and flew off. We took a break at the picnic table, trying to identify the birdcalls surrounding us in the warm air. Not so visible as they'd been when seen through the cold panes of glass all winter, the birds were more audible, unleashing such joyful songs they set our hearts thrilling with happiness and our minds alight with the wonder at the new lives hatching in hidden nests among pokeweed and hickory of our backyard habitat. We heard the distinctive "Poor Sam, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" cry of the white-throated sparrow sojourning on his way to the Canadian forests, and the three-note love song of the mating chickadee. Over our heads on a maple branch cooed two mourning doves murmuring intimate secrets. "Look, there's a song sparrow! I recognize his striped head." Bob pointed to sticks atop the brush pile stacked in our garden. The glad, little fellow was showing off for his mate, music bursting from his beak. He threw back his head uttering a stream of pure, liquid notes mad with joy to the heavens. "I always meant to burn that brush pile to make way for vegetables," said Bob. "Leave it alone. They're nesting in it," I replied. "Vegetables we can have any time. The world is richer for song sparrows!"
Margaret Bobalek King is a resident of Derry and a member of the Greater Derry Creative Women's Writers' Group.
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