Text: Kristel Vilbaste
Photos: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis from forum
The sea bays have bright eyes of open water where waterfowl migrants gather: ducks, geese and swans.
Bubbling, bubbling ... in the early dawn light. The mysterious sound does not however come from the bottomless bog mires that still have a white snow cover on them, but from black-feathered musicians – the black grouse.
The four spring signs of the week:
fluting starling,
flights of waterfowl inland,
snowdrops, Hepaticas - and
snowfall.
Arriving at the bog, drawn by the bubbling of the grouse, there will not be much more to see than the traces of skipping and wing lines sketched on the snow, but there is a smell of spring.
In the sun on an edge of the bog lake a row of little grey brushes march along – the flowerheads of the hare’s-tail cottongrass, soon to burst into flower. In the brushwood on the outskirt of the bog the daphne also shows some pink between the bud scales – a little more warmth and sun, and a sea of flowers will open here. In the bog the turf-hillocks have appeared from under the snow and stepping across them a blood-red row of footprints remains on the snow – you have inadvertently trampled on cranberries.
Leaving time for birds
Suddenly a crazy number of birds have become caroholics – half-hundred-headed flocks of redpolls and goldfinches are on the highways. They are neither winter nor summer birds here in Estonia. On the road they look for refreshment on the route back from southern areas to the north. But slowly our own birds are coming back too from the south. In Mustvee a pair of starlings is back and fluting. In the top of our birch there is still only the nuthatch who whistles. But in the middle of last week smaller groups of starlings, cranes, lapwings. geese and swans arrived everywhere in Estonia. The “Hello Spring!” children have seen chaffinches and even a wagtail. The birdwatchers’ lists tell about the first white storks who arrived this weekend. Just a week of warm winds and birdsong would be echoing outside the window.
The snowfall on March 26 offered all of Estonia an exciting show of large snowflakes.
Green carpet on a white floor
This whole week people could walk ‘on air’ – the degrees of cold at night made such a stable ice crust on the thick snow that it was possible to walk and slide on it without risk of sinking through. In the forest the white carpet is a little more crumbly, and almost covered by layers of seeds and spruce needles: shedding of the old needles is just going on, said Gennadi Skromnov who had been setting up this summer’s black stork web camera. But twigs on snow, even in the open, now “eat snow” – slowly the heat-absorbing birch twigs too sink deeply into the snow. Mikk Sarv says that people of old knew that after Maarjapäev, Annunciation Day, straws and stones begin to detest snow. The midday sun heats all that is darker than snow, and so the snow around these things must melt.
The wetlands are patchy: yesteryear’s craneberries and leatherleafs have appeared from under the snow.
Six bear cubs
Interesting to see if bears will be given any living space at all in the woods. The sixth bear cub came to Nigual animal rehabilitation centre at the end of the week. It seems that soon all bear babies shall go to kindergarten like the children of people. Kaja Kübar thinks that this sixth cub has already been in some kindergarten before coming to the Nigula centre, because instead of the usual forest smell of bear cubs there was a strong smell of household chemicals. Deer had a particularly hard time last week, because, differently from people, their narrow hooves tend to sink through the ice crust and the edge of the crust cuts like a knife. The deer too wait for a releasing spring rain. Until then it is better not to disturb them in the woods, better to be busy in the home garden. Because everywhere in the gardens snowdrops are now flowering and it is said that even butterflies have been seen already in spite of the nightly minus ten or so cold degrees.
Redpolls are on the way to their homes on the taiga or tundra.
Birch Sap Alert!
Now is the time to search out your drills, sap spouts and birch sap containers, and go out and talk to the birch – soon, very soon this year’s sap testing time should begin. Find a tree not too low down in a valley but not on a hill either. And make a sap-collecting pact with the tree!
FOR CHILDREN: Potška
Hooldus teachers from Setomaa described an interesting game to me, which seems rather like home-made softball. A tin can is put on top of a big stone, and the players try to get it down by throwing a half-metre-long alder stick, of about 5 cm diameter, at it from behind a line about 10 m away. The potška keeper who is standing at the stone tries to prevent it with his bat stick. If the thrower manages to get the can down with his throw then he must also touch the keeper before the keeper manages to put up the can on the stone again. Either points are counted, or the keeper and thrower change places.
Quotation:
Only some warm winds are needed and the birdsong would be echoing outside the window.
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