Vroom... Vroom...

It doesn't feel like spring--too cold--and it doesn't look like spring--the trees are still bare.  But it sounds like spring.  And the sounds of spring are guy sounds.

Open your windows on the first warm morning and you'll hear the noise of guys revving their engines.  Perhaps it is a mating ritual, but I am a woman, and can testify that I am not and never have been attracted by the sound of a revving engine, nor do I know any woman who is.  But every spring, right in synch with the first daffodils, there are the guys, on their motorcycles and in their cars, going vroom, vroom.

Animal guys are out there too, making their own noises.  There is the bluebird, alas, who for the third year in a row is nesting by our back porch and spends hours flinging himself feet-first against the window:

bang!
bang bang!
bang!
bang! bang! bang! (bis)

What is he thinking?  He's not mistaking his own reflection for a rival and trying to scare it away, because he bangs even when there is no reflection.  After three years of watching him, I can only conclude that he's making the bluebird equivalent of vroom, vroom, letting the world know that he's a guy.  The female hasn't been too much in evidence yet, though the banging has not prevented her in past years from laying her eggs.

It is preventing me, however, from enjoying the peace and quiet that I richly deserve after a day of sorting and packing my worldly goods.  Am I the only person in history to be irritated by a bluebird?  For a while I thought that I would miss his company after we move.  Now I think I'll be glad to say good-bye.

This morning we awoke to the sight of a turkey flock sauntering across the front field.  There were six or seven of them, looking sleek as crows.  But one of them, the guy, was swollen into a feathery sphere twice the size of the others.  In the chilly gray light he seemed to float just above the ground, carried along by the breeze like a balloon in a Thanksgiving parade.

Oozing authority, he was herding his harem towards the shelter of the woods.  The hens went along docilely enough, looking as though they were used to this sort of thing.  We were indoors and the dogs, who'd seen plenty of turkeys before but never one in full spring show-off mode, were barking so loudly they rattled the windows.  We couldn't hear the vocal accompaniments to the tom's display, but from the look of his plumage and his swagger, I could tell he was going vroom, vroom.

Rites Of Spring

Two chicken-sized birds appeared on a tree behind the house this morning and sent the dogs into a frenzy of barking. They were clinging upright to the trunk of a nondescript tree (all trees are nondescript these days, without their leaves), going round and round by making little sideways hops, but always keeping the trunk between them.

They had long beaks and black-and-white plumage, and bright red caps shaped like those silly pointed bikers' helmets. They kept on opposite sides of the trunk, so it was hard to compare them, but one did perhaps have a tad more white on the wing than the other. So, according to the bird book, that one--the one with a bit more white--was a female.

In which case, the coyly peeking and chasing around the tree trunk was a prelude to mating. Or, if they were two males, they were establishing territory, as a prelude to ditto. It's also possible that they were two females, but if so, the books are silent on the reasons for their behavior.

In any case, in between shushing the crazed dogs and adjusting my dusty binoculars, I did establish that the two birds were Pileated Woodpeckers, the largest woodpecker species in North America if you don't count the mythical Ivory Billed W.

I looked up that weird word, "pileated." It comes from "pileus," a felt cap worn by Roman soldiers. But wait. Didn't Roman soldiers wear plumed helmets, and those little leather skirts? Perhaps that was their summer outfit, and they reserved the felt caps for the colder seasons. If so, what was the rest of their plumage like?