Local Spring Evenings

     I consider sunny evenings from mid-April to the middle of May to be the most enchanting times of year in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  To me, they are enjoyable and inspiring.  I also appreciate spring evenings in wetlands on woodland edges and around ponds in overgrown meadows the most.  And I hear more wildlife in those lovely habitats at dusk, including the inspiring chorusing of birds and rapturous calling of amphibians, than I see.
     At sunset, I enjoy hearing male American robins and white-throated sparrows singing beautiful courtship songs among young trees and shrubbery.  Robins stay here to nest, but the white-throats will migrate farther north to raise young.  And I am often thrilled to hear a pair or two of loudly honking Canada geese flying over the singing robins and sparrows. 
     While robins and white-throats sing in the gathering darkness, I also listen to the fascinating courtship displays of male American woodcocks, a kind of inland sandpiper.  Each male woodcock exits a wooded bottomland and lands on bare soil in a clearing.  There he vocally "peents" for a minute, then circles upward on rhythmically twittering wings.  At the zenith of his flight, he sings, then drops to bare ground where he performs again and again to attract female woodcocks for mating.
     Meanwhile, male spring peeper frogs peep loudly, male pickerel frogs snore softly and male American toads trill musically, each individual with his throat bulged out to amplify the sound.  All that wonderful, ancient chorusing in wetlands and ponds under the red flowers of red maples in wooded bottomlands attracts females of each species to the water to spawn.
      And when I sit in darkness by a wetland or pond in the woods and listen to the ageless, ethereal concerts of these tailless amphibians, I fancy myself living millions of years ago in the Age of Amphibians, when those creatures ruled the land.  The orchestras of these frogs and toads are entertaining, intriguing and inspiring.
     I also enjoy hearing the lovely, twilight songs of bird species that wintered in Central and South America, but came to bottomland woods in eastern North America, including in Lancaster County, by the end of April, to raise young.  Males of each bird species sing beautifully to establish nesting territories, repel other males of their respective kinds and attract females to themselves to rear offspring.
     Wood thrushes sing mesmerizing, flute-like phrases that sound like "a-o-lee", or "e-o lay", while veeries, another kind of thrush, breezily whistle flute-like songs that repeatedly spiral downward.  Eastern wood pewees solemnly, but beautifully sigh "pee-a-wee" over and over again.  All these birds gently sing as darkness overtakes bottomland woods every evening from late April into early July.  And all these bird songs are soothing to my soul; I am at peace when I hear them in the gathering dusk.         
     I enjoy sunny evenings in April and May.  They are full of pretty and wonderful natural happenings that are pleasing, inspiring and soothing to the human soul.