Voices of Spring

In the midwest it’s the cardinals, in the east it’s Fox Sparrows: every landscape has a birdsong that means spring to me. Here in Tucson, it can only be the slightly raspy three notes of the Verdin, the first a full tone higher than the second two, endlessly repeated on these bright, warm days.

And it’s the same for our neighbors, though they don’t know it. Every spring come the same questions: “We’ve heard this bird….” And they are as delighted as I am to discover in mesquites, palo verdes, and hackberries the softball-sized nests the busy males have been building over the last weeks. In fact, one of the best ‘field marks’ for Verdins this time of year is the fact that half of them are always carrying a feather in their beaks to add to the nest lining!