Early signs of spring migration
March begins the spring that most of us know: the time of noticeably longer days, sugar-maple buckets placed on the trees, the year’s first robins, and birds singing early in the morning. It is also the time when great flocks of birds arrive that we don’t consider classic cheerful spring harbingers.
Last week, I was awakened by such a flock and the roar of air through a thousand wings. Grackles! They were everywhere. It was a tremendous flock of hundreds and hundreds of grackles. These big black birds filled the air, whirling around in synchronicity; from all sides, front and back of the house, they landed all at once. It looked as if the trees had dropped black foliage on the ground. I carefully approached the window, but they startled and instantly exploded into thundering flight. I watched a funnel cloud of grackles, and some red-wing blackbirds spiral out of view.
The grackles and redwinged blackbirds are some of the earliest signs of the spring migration. Rivaled only by the pine warbler and the American woodcock, these two socalled blackbirds begin the steady procession of breeding birds back to our thawing landscape in early March. Both grackles and red-wings are raucous, but their strident calls are a welcome experience for the winter weary New Englander.
These blackbirds often stay together throughout the winter, wandering as nomads, they frequent agricultural fields, woodland edges, and suburban regions. Some may roam through Connecticut, turning up unexpectedly to maraud bird feeders. Generally, they avoid our region and winter to our south.
The grackle invokes fond memories of where I lived as a youth, in Longmeadow, Mass. There was a giant white pine tree where every spring the grackles congregated. I can still hear their rusty hinge call notes emanating from that massive pine. By late March, most of the birds departed, but a few pairs remained to nest.
Grackles are fond of all evergreens, but around here they seem to prefer the big white pines. Even in Vermont, where I share a family cabin, the grackles flock to a grove of white pines standing majestically atop a forgotten hill. Usually arriving late in
the day, at summer's end, they fly in, across the valley and over our pond, to settle in the grove. They drop from the highest branches, one at a time, to forage the deep duff of pine needles below and then ascend into the bows to roost for the night.
While I don't have any giant pines here at my home, I do have an expansive wetland nearby. The Raymond Brook Marsh in Colchester may not entice grackles, but it does attract red-winged blackbirds. It is there, in the wetland, that the red-wings will build their finely woven nests around reedy stalks and raise their broods. Though they sing alone now, soon their voices will be lost as life returns, and the bedlam of bird song begins.
And so it is with March that, even though the days are still cold, there is that promise of a better day just ahead. Today may be wicked, with fierce frigid winds and driving snows; yesterday was clear and calm. I anticipate tomorrow. Now is the time to experience the cranky calls of grackles from the pines and the boisterous red-wings bursting with song as they cling to brown withered cattail reeds in the marsh.