A Spring Week in the Midwest I

It may sound pathetically fallacious, but I firmly believe that the weather participated in, or at very least sympathized with, every aspect of my rare springtime visit to the midwest. There was rain and wind and mist and fog, but there were also brilliant sunny patches; it was so cold that I had to buy a pair of flannel pajamas to wear under my jeans, then so warm that even a t-shirt chafed.

I’m rarely in the midwest at the height of spring, and this year, again, only a funeral got me back to Nebraska at what is often the most beautiful, and often, somehow, the saddest time of year.

The first few days of my visit this time were busy ones and good, as we said goodbye to my uncle and spent precious time with the family. More than once I found myself remembering to tell Kevin about a bird I’d seen–the Chimney Swifts over the mortuary during the visitation, the Chipping Sparrows and Brown Thrashers in the cemetery trees. He would have been happy, I think, to know that an adult Red-headed Woodpecker, my first of the spring, crossed the road over the impressively long funeral procession.

I’d already planned to be in western Iowa for the spring meeting of the Iowa Ornithologists’ Union, and so set off Friday for the short drive to Carroll and Swan Lake State Park. It turned out to be a good afternoon for a drive by myself, and I rode along with the windows down, pulling off whenever the sweet din of the Field Sparrows became too loud to resist. One Spizella-lined road led me to Ahart Rudd Wildlife Area, a collection of hard-used but recovering fields with brome and some ridgetop prairie grasses, with a rough wooded gully leading down to the usual farm pond.

The abundant trilling Field Sparrows were joined on the edges by White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows, and Tree Swallows were checking out every bit of wood that might, just might, contain a suitable nest cavity.

Areas like this are often created for Ring-necked Pheasant and White-tailed Deer (though my choice of preposition may be a bit misleading, as I expect this deer might agree).

There were plenty of cock pheasants honking and beating their breasts everywhere you looked, a startling set of sounds I don’t often hear nowadays. I later learned that Iowa’s pheasant population is in massive decline (and that, hurray, the state is no longer interested in stocking non-native species!), but I thought there were still plenty of them.

There were muskrat huts on the pond, and this raccoon, the only live one I saw all week, was snoozing high among the riotous blooms of a black willow.

The warmth, the sun, the quiet, the animals, and above all the bitter, soapy, heartbreakingly beautiful smell of wild plum blossoms could have kept me there all day.

But I was eager, too, to get to Carroll, to check in to the meeting, catch up with friends old and new, and look for the Black-bellied Whistling Duck that had been reported the day before. I managed the first two tasks, and slept well that night, waking before the alarm to get out and into the field.