Birds Do It, Bees Do It
As we exit the winter’s cold grip and get ready to move into spring’s warm embrace, love is all around us. In some cases, it has been all along, with birds such as Great-horned Owls already rearing young preparing to fledge the nest. But in most cases, now is the time for courtship and consummation.
For instance, from December into March, adult Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) will make their pilgrimage from their underground forest lairs to nearby vernal pools, where they will mate and deposit eggs to hatch a month later. Like spring itself, these vernal pools are ephemeral and fleeting, but provide important habitats to many species throughout New Jersey including numerous salamanders and frogs. An apparently empty pond in November can be teeming with egg masses and wriggling vertebrates come February. The seasonal ephemeralness of these ponds is also what makes them such great nurseries for our regional amphibian biota: lack of fish predators which would typically feast on this temporary abundance of eggs and young beasties. Not that predators don’t exist, but the lack of fish is key for many of these species to survive and thrive.
Come early summer, our new cohort of tiger salamanders will emerge from the ponds and migrate back into the forest of their parents, returning underground for the next four to five years before reaching sexual maturity and continuing the process once again.
While you won’t hear any chorus of salamanders tipping you off to their whereabouts, the same does not hold true for our frogs: with each species offering a uniquely identifiable chorus which reaches fever pitch in the early spring.
In our neck of the woods, we often hear Spring Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) during the first warm evenings, but also quite common are both Southern Gray Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis), Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog (Lithobates kauffeldi), and Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans). If you don’t know them already, learning these common sounds will open up a whole new world, and make you more aware when something new comes along (there are a number of other species of frog and toad that vocalize in our area).
While the frog chorus can be exhilarating, especially under the cover of darkness on a warm evening, another auditory experience worth the price of admission is the diurnal chorus of sea ducks wintering off our Cape May shores. I’ve written about winter ducks before, so in short: since they pair up and court during the winter, they are typically found in their finest dress at a time when we’re all struggling to find something colorful to counter the short days and winter gray. For this I am grateful. But to me, it’s the song of the sea duck that is the icing on the cake, and I can’t be the only one since the Cape May Bird Observatory even offers a guided walk called “Long-tails In Love” in February, celebrating the courtship song and behavior of one of our common sea ducks: the Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis).
For the best results, drive yourself up to Avalon, either the end of 3rd Avenue, where you can walk up onto the seawall with a view of Townsend’s Inlet, or the 8th Street Jetty, where you can walk out to have water on either side of you. I prefer to do this early in the morning, and when the weather is still so that sound carries far on the gently rolling sea. Listen for the plaintive whistle of the Black Scoter (Melanitta americana), which winters in rafts offshore with Surf Scoters (Melanitta perspicillata). If you think you’re hearing something from a movie set in the North Woods, you might just be picking up on a Common Loon (Gavia immer), a species that winters in the Atlantic Ocean and begins calling and courting before migrating to inland freshwater lakes to nest.
But the star of the show, if you’re lucky to hear them, are the Long-tailed Ducks, which combine both a striking plumage and an almost comical song that has been described phonetically as “upup OW OweLEP!” When a number of males sing together, continually trading parts, I challenge you not to smile no matter how long the winter has been. So wherever or whenever you roam afield in early spring, keep eyes and ears sharp for the signs around you, and may you find your own courtship chorus and let ‘er rip. For spring is ephemeral, so make haste before summer arrives, the masses descend on the beach, and the sun melts us into our chairs once again.
