Return of the Brown Thrasher

Brown thrasher, by Julie Zickefoose.

Our brown thrasher got back today, or rather last night. Today was a cloudy, dull-gray day with a rumor of rain in the sky that never really materialized. Both Julie and I heard the thrasher sing, separately, but he's not in full voice yet. He sang infrequently, and not from his normal, very obvious perches, but from within the woodland's fringe. I took off out the door this afternoon, intending to digiscope the spring's newest arrival, but he would sing a bit, then clam up and move to another vantage point. I never did get a fix on his location.

Maybe tomorrow.

It was hard to hear our thrasher clearly. The robins have really upped their singing these past few days, and the goldfinches are twittering like school girls, at times at an almost deafening level. There have been April and May mornings here when we could not hear anything other than goldfinches.

Other indisputable signs of spring: five warm, light-blue eggs in our front yard bluebird box; lots more screaming from the resident red-shouldered hawks, major spring peeper action, the American toads tuning up in our patio pond, and Julie asking me to start the tiller for her. Each spring, when the brown thrasher arrives, Julie MUST plant the garden. I could set daylight savings time by it. Sure enough, she not only tilled the garden and re-mulched it, she got the Bird Spa going again, and removed the crusty winter brush pile.

Me? I worked on my taxes, another sign of spring's continual unfurling.