April showers in May

April-like showers covered the mountain this first weekend in May. It’s been a good rain, the kind that soaks in, not the kind that runs off in rivulets. Sometimes the rain was hard enough to keep me inside, sometimes it was just a comfortable sprinkle. Always the landscape was misty or foggy, with ever more greenery coloring the woods.

Ovenbirds have now arrived, to join the chorus with the wood thrush, whose lovely song carries throughout the forest. I’ve often wondered why that song seems to carry through the trees so well, and now I’ve learned the answer.

I was sitting out on the front deck during one of the weekend’s rain free episodes when a wood thrush landed in a low tree just over my head. I didn’t move, so I wouldn’t scare it and was rewarded when it began to sing, I almost had to put my hands over my ears. When that bird is close, the song is loud, very loud. It’s still beautiful, of course, but another 10-15 feet of distance wouldn’t have hurt the beauty of the song one bit.

The rain has finally kicked the ferns into new growth. They were looking pretty bad this spring. Some hadn’t even produced fiddleheads yet, but now they all seem to be growing again. For the moment, I have no new flowers around the woods, just more of the ones I’ve already photographed. That will soon change, probably as soon as the sun comes out again for a day or so, which might not be until next week. Are we sure this isn’t April? It sure feels like it, despite the calendar.