I have pleasant memories of the songs and calls of birds in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania when I was a boy during the late 1940's and early 1950's. Most of the birds were common, everyday species in the various places I lived. I never had to look for those birds because they happened to be in the places I heard them before I got there. But it seemed I had an ear for bird songs in those days.
I remember walking along a sidewalk in Lancaster City when I was about five and seeing and hearing flocks of chimney swifts wheeling across the sky. The swifts chipped and chattered cheerily as they zipped after flying insects to eat. Those swifts were one of the first species of birds I can remember seeing.
A couple of years later my family moved to the country about a half mile north of Rohrerstown in Lancaster County. One sunny morning early in May, I stepped into a 50 acre woodland and heard many birds singing from the tree tops. I didn't know what species they were at the time, but later heard the same kind again and realized they were red-eyed vireos here from wintering territories in Central and South America.
When I roamed the fields around Rohrerstown as a boy, I would hear the intriguing piping of a small bird in hedgerows between the fields. Finally, I saw one of those songsters perched on the top of a tree and singing away vigorously. It was a small, deep-blue bird that I later identified as a male indigo bunting. I saw and heard many more indigos in summer in fields around home.
One summer evening when I was a child still living outside Rohrerstown, I was walking through sun-filled fields to a woodlot to enjoy nature. Along the way I heard a beautifully whistled bird song that slid up, then down in pitch and seemed to say "three up, three down". The bird repeated its song over and over, and I finally saw it perched on top of a plant. Its back and wings were brown and its under parts were yellow. It also had a black bib. It was a handsome male eastern meadowlark that took my breath away. And its song seemed haunting to me.
A few years later, my parents bought a summer cottage in the forest of Mt.Gretna in neighboring Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. Every summer evening during June and deep into July, I would hear the lovely, melancholy songs of male wood thrushes and eastern wood pewees, repeated over and over at the same time, and floating gently among the tall trees, until the woods were almost dark. The thrushes' songs were flute-like phrases that seemed to say, "e-o-laaa" or "a-o-leeee". The pewee songs were heart-rending; a quiet, repeated "pe-a-weee", "pe-a-weee" on the same note, with emphasis on the "weee", and ending with "peee-urrrr", with the ur sliding downward. Both the thrush and pewee songs would fade off with the darkening of the night in the otherwise quiet woodland. The woods at dusk and the birds' beautiful songs were like Heaven on Earth.
One or two nights at Mt. Gretna, in the middle of the night, I heard a male whip-poor-will repeatedly and loudly chanting its common name, "whip-poor-will". It was a wild, stirring chant that filled me with awe and excitement. I wished at the time that that boisterous, enjoyable chanting would never end.
In sixth grade, I went on a school field trip. When we stepped out of the bus, I heard a lovely bird song that started as a few slow notes and quickly accelerated to a beautiful trill in a line of nearby shrubbery. That kind of song from a few birds was emitted repeatedly and I thought the birds were eastern bluebirds. But later, upon hearing bluebirds' songs and the singing of other birds like those on that field trip, I realized that the mystery birds were field sparrows.
These are a few of my pleasant memories about nature when I was a boy. Readers may have similar memories about the natural world that will give you joy.
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