April evenings in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania are one of the most lovely and inspiring times of year. Daylight each succeeding day gets longer, the landscape turns greener, and there is much natural music into the dark of night to enjoy and excite our imaginations and feelings. Spring is in the air and its wonderful to get outside in the warmth and sunlight of longer evenings.
Male American robins and white-throated sparrows sing from thickets in hedgerows, woodland edges and maturing suburban areas, with their many trees and shrubs. The robins will stay where they are singing to raise young through the rest of spring well into summer. But the white-throats will migrate farther north to their nesting territories.
Robins' songs are loud and cheery and are heard mostly at dawn and dusk, but anytime through the day as well. White-throats' whistled songs, uttered mostly in the evenings, are gentle and inspiring, and consist of two long notes, followed by four shorter notes, all on the same pitch.
Late in April, we hear the flute-like notes of wood thrushes singing in the woods and the piping, cheery songs of gray catbirds from shrubbery in hedgerows, woodland edges and suburban areas. These birds have just come north to raise young and will continue to sing during most every dusk through May, June and most of July.
Male spring peepers, which are a type of tree frog, pickerel frogs and American toads peep, snore and trill respectively in local, woodsy wetlands during April evenings and into the nights, and on rainy days. These three types of tailless amphibians create ancient concerts of their own, or together in unison. Their timeless, wild calling, which can be heard by us humans a few hundred yards away, brings the females of each species to the males in shallow water for spawning of eggs, in gelatin masses from the frogs, and in jelly strings stuck to vegetation from the toads.
Some people go out of their way during April evenings to hear the primitive, beautiful calling of these frogs and toads. To them, those amphibian sounds are inspiring, and another sign that spring has truly arrived.
Male American woodcocks court from the same wooded bottomlands where the frogs and toads call and spawn, and at the same time. However, the woodcocks, being warm-blooded, start their displays during March evenings.
Woodcocks, a kind of inland sandpiper, live and hatch young in low, successional woodlands throughout most of the eastern United States. They poke their long beaks into the moist soil of bottomland woods to feed on earthworms and other invertebrates they pull out of the ground.
Courting male woodcocks fly out of the woods soon after sunset and land on a spot of bare soil in a clearing near the woods. There they stand with their long bills on their chests and vocally, repeatedly "beep" for about a minute. Then they take off in upward, spiral flight, their wings twittering rhythmically, until they are almost out of sight. Then they vocally sing, the lovely notes seeming to fall to the ground. Then those male woodcocks plummet to the ground after their songs and land on the same patch of bare ground, or another one, and start their courtship display again. That continues time after time, evening after evening until hunger or females ready to mate interrupt.
Some people make evening trips to known woodcock display areas to see and hear the lusty males in action. Just go to a woodcock habitat at sunset and wait for those long-billed hermits to come out of the woods soon after sunset. They can be briefly seen as silhouettes against the fading light of the western sky before they drop to the ground.
Many times during April evenings when robins are singing, amphibians are calling and woodcocks are wooing, flocks of clamoring, resident Canada geese swiftly fly over on their way to feeding fields or a human-made impoundment where they will rest and socialize between feeding forays. The loud, musical honking of the geese is wild and exciting in itself, and part of the wild, inspiring natural sounds of April evenings in Lancaster County.
The natural sounds of April evenings are stirring to many human souls and imaginations. And they are enjoyable and thrilling to hear as well. They are some of the many calls of the wild.
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