Fast forward

Suddenly it's April.  Still the same weather as February, well, OK, no snow, but that rain is cold.  The birds have turned up the volume quite a lot since the quiet of winter.  On a walk out for the paper this morning I heard a Virginia rail in the marsh- rails are marsh birds, very skulky and unsociable. They look kind of like a small brown long-legged chicken.  Only the head is very different, with beautiful red highlights and a long, tapered bill for digging into that marsh mud for food.  In Bird ID books, rails are filed under "Chicken-Like Wading Birds"  which describes them exactly.  They take high, careful steps through the mud and you could swear they're frowning if you're lucky enough to actually see one.   And quiet.  But this time of year, the male is interested in finding any available girl rails, so he calls from the deep new marsh grass.  It's sort of  a kuk-kuk-kuk- getting faster as he goes.  It's a wonderful, noisy sign that spring is here.
There was also a woodpecker, probably a small one, drumming nearby.  When you hear a rat-a-tat really fast, it's a woodpecker.   If one picks your house to drum on (lucky you) you can at least know it's self-limited to the breeding season.  They're letting other woodpeckers know that this territory is taken.  Most of the cures for this house-drumming that I've heard of seem doomed to fail.  Finally the hormones ebb and the woodpecker is more focused on raising a family somewhere nearby.
The skunk cabbage on our pond edge is slow to bloom this year.  They're like blazing yellow exclamation points along the wet roadsides, but here, they're just beginning to venture a lance-like leaf into the sun.  I have a plant ID book that describes skunk cabbage as "a robust, hairless perennial"...sounds like some of my best friends. 
Tonight the pond is mirror still, oyster colored.  A wide soft arrow in the water is created by a beaver heading north.  Just eyes and nose above the water, he must be heading home after work.  All the birds and critters around us are trying to make a living, just like us.  They struggle and work hard to feed families and try to get along and be safe.  And they do their best to live peacefully among us.  Sometimes we cross paths with someone, maybe a skunk or even a black bear, and hackles rise briefly all around.  But none of the critters that live among us wish us any harm.  I hope we can return that favor.