Beginning of May: night life season opens
Text: Kristel Vilbaste
Photos: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis from forum
Maples flower.
Although the week ended with slight night frosts, the nightingale arrived just after Walpurgis night, and opened the season for summery partying in warm nights. Spice was added in the beginning of the week by whining mosquitoes in the evening.
The four spring signs of the week:
Town dandelions,
Oriole whistles and cuckoo calls,
Maple flowers and
Summery warmth.
Most entertaining to watch at the moment are the swaggering smaller birds – especially when they are competing for the too few nesting sites. One morning a wagtail pair and a pied flycatcher pair had a long argument outside my kitchen window, egged on by a lonely redstart. Chitter-chatter, angry picking at the leaf litter, each in turn going higher up in the branches than the other to sing … Finally the showing off and bustling ended with the redstart going off; the flycatchers went to annoy the sparrows that nest in the box in an apple tree, and the nesting site was left to the wagtails. And at once the wagtail courting display was on – the male threw his head back and started to circle around the female, dragging his wings … The chaffinch duels are thrilling too – first outsinging each other, then a parrot-like sidewise stepping dance along the birch branches, then finally nerves break down, and the show climaxes with a rush of threatening flights.
Cuckoo.
Summer birds have arrived
Here in the chill from the lake we still have fewer birds than at Estonia’s southern border. “Here are grasshopper warblers, the sedge warbler, a flock of ten snipes just rose, I think they are great snipes, I must go and check once more tonight.“ Olev Merivee from Tõrva tells me on the telephone and then calls out, “Mihkel... greater spotted eagle … look, to the left of the sun … follow that dot … wide flight “ then more calmly, “no, I haven’t heard the nightingale yet but the whitethroat and the garden warbler are here.“ Here in Vilusi the oriole whistled in the neighbour’s garden during the May holidays, and I hoisted the flag accompanied by never-ending cuckoo calls. The eagles are everyday visitors on the lakeshore, and the bittern hoots in the reeds. The hottest news from the bird web cameras are that the tawny owl chicks yearn to leave home, and that the Latvian spotted eagles have their first egg – our pair already has 2.
Here in the chill from the lake we still have fewer birds than at Estonia’s southern border. “Here are grasshopper warblers, the sedge warbler, a flock of ten snipes just rose, I think they are great snipes, I must go and check once more tonight.“ Olev Merivee from Tõrva tells me on the telephone and then calls out, “Mihkel... greater spotted eagle … look, to the left of the sun … follow that dot … wide flight “ then more calmly, “no, I haven’t heard the nightingale yet but the whitethroat and the garden warbler are here.“ Here in Vilusi the oriole whistled in the neighbour’s garden during the May holidays, and I hoisted the flag accompanied by never-ending cuckoo calls. The eagles are everyday visitors on the lakeshore, and the bittern hoots in the reeds. The hottest news from the bird web cameras are that the tawny owl chicks yearn to leave home, and that the Latvian spotted eagles have their first egg – our pair already has 2.
Marsh marigold buds rise from spring flood waters.
Frog babies
The spawn of the common frog has developed into tiny, tailed frog babies, to start with still inside the protective shell of the small gel globes. Their companions in the pond, the common newts, are mating, often two crested males getting at the same female. The rare spadefoot frog chugs his quiet “klokk-klokk-klokk“ already in daytime, luckily he has chosen the irrigation pond this year instead of the swimming pool. Ditch waters swarm with whirligig beetles, diving beetle larvae, and all sorts of other things ... The marsh marigold raises its flower buds out of the water. Hornets and wasps look for nest-building places, the bumblebees are so energetic that the air reverberates of their buzzing. Honeybees had a peaceful winter, half of the autumn food stores are still uneaten, and already there are eggs and fresh pollen in the hive. In Peipsi, the roaches, ides and perches are really big this year. And in River Emajõgi the turb is spawning, and in sea bays shore waters are boiling with shoals of Baltic herrings.
Honey fragrance from maple flowers
The phenological spring is here, weatherman Gennadi Skromnov says, maples are in flower everywhere in towns. “And those city dandelions reaching out from cracks in the asphalt already have flowers at the top of half-metre stalks,” he adds. Birches have proper mouse-ear leaves, and prick them to listen for rain, because forests are crackling dry and in danger of fires. On the lake shore the downy small pasqueflowers stretch upwards in the sand dune furrows. The bird-cherry still seems to hold back its flowering, to the great relief of small garden potato growers, whose spring this year has become very hurried. Mikk Sarv knows that according to folk sayings another sign for getting the potatoes planted, in addition to the flowering of the bird-cherry, could be the hatching of the blackbird’s eggs – luckily no sky-blue shells are to be seen yet. May 7 is the linnuristipäev, Bird Cross Day; feathered friends should be kept in eye and mind then. But the nights are still so cold that the heating in the plastic greenhouses of the cucumber-growers at Peipsi is at full go in the evenings.
The spawn of the common frog has developed into tiny, tailed frog babies, to start with still inside the protective shell of the small gel globes. Their companions in the pond, the common newts, are mating, often two crested males getting at the same female. The rare spadefoot frog chugs his quiet “klokk-klokk-klokk“ already in daytime, luckily he has chosen the irrigation pond this year instead of the swimming pool. Ditch waters swarm with whirligig beetles, diving beetle larvae, and all sorts of other things ... The marsh marigold raises its flower buds out of the water. Hornets and wasps look for nest-building places, the bumblebees are so energetic that the air reverberates of their buzzing. Honeybees had a peaceful winter, half of the autumn food stores are still uneaten, and already there are eggs and fresh pollen in the hive. In Peipsi, the roaches, ides and perches are really big this year. And in River Emajõgi the turb is spawning, and in sea bays shore waters are boiling with shoals of Baltic herrings.
Honey fragrance from maple flowers
The phenological spring is here, weatherman Gennadi Skromnov says, maples are in flower everywhere in towns. “And those city dandelions reaching out from cracks in the asphalt already have flowers at the top of half-metre stalks,” he adds. Birches have proper mouse-ear leaves, and prick them to listen for rain, because forests are crackling dry and in danger of fires. On the lake shore the downy small pasqueflowers stretch upwards in the sand dune furrows. The bird-cherry still seems to hold back its flowering, to the great relief of small garden potato growers, whose spring this year has become very hurried. Mikk Sarv knows that according to folk sayings another sign for getting the potatoes planted, in addition to the flowering of the bird-cherry, could be the hatching of the blackbird’s eggs – luckily no sky-blue shells are to be seen yet. May 7 is the linnuristipäev, Bird Cross Day; feathered friends should be kept in eye and mind then. But the nights are still so cold that the heating in the plastic greenhouses of the cucumber-growers at Peipsi is at full go in the evenings.
A time for fast growing for leaves. Rowan.
Sorrel soup!
Isn’t it strange that we have come to the stage where sorrel is sold and bought in shops – the acidy leaves from a plant that now fills all meadows and garden crannies. Memorise the leaf shape from the flora, and go pick a nice potful in a meadow!
FOR CHILDREN: Squirrel pipe
Every grandmother or grandfather can teach their grandchildren how to make sounds like cock calls from a blade of couch-grass between two thumbs. But even more fun is to make a real instrument: set a thin blade of couch-grass or some other broad-leaved weed between two hollowed wooden blocks, and tie the blocks tightly against each other with a piece of string. When you blow on the taut leaf it will make music, of a kind, – for instance a thank-you song for Mothering Day.
Isn’t it strange that we have come to the stage where sorrel is sold and bought in shops – the acidy leaves from a plant that now fills all meadows and garden crannies. Memorise the leaf shape from the flora, and go pick a nice potful in a meadow!
FOR CHILDREN: Squirrel pipe
Every grandmother or grandfather can teach their grandchildren how to make sounds like cock calls from a blade of couch-grass between two thumbs. But even more fun is to make a real instrument: set a thin blade of couch-grass or some other broad-leaved weed between two hollowed wooden blocks, and tie the blocks tightly against each other with a piece of string. When you blow on the taut leaf it will make music, of a kind, – for instance a thank-you song for Mothering Day.
Quotation:
When the bird-cherry flowers then it is time to get your potatoes in the soil.
When the bird-cherry flowers then it is time to get your potatoes in the soil.
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