We’ve been seeing resident Canada geese fly over every day, squawking and honking. We also heard them as they pair-up on neighboring ponds.
We’ve also been seeing wood ducks and mallards drift almost silently into our pond. We haven’t had woodcock visit our lower meadow, but my friend Phil spent some time on the Heidelberg game land with his young English setter, Hazel, and he’s finding some woodcock. The migrants are starting to move through with some lingering to rear their broods of young ones.
I’m hoping some woodcock decide to stay around once they arrive. They should be passing through soon.
If the soils down near the creek decide to dry, I’ll take a walk at dusk to listen for the males to do their springtime dance. They’ll fly up off the ground almost out of sight, then flutter back down whistling their “peent” sounds all the way to the ground.
If you haven’t seen and heard this ritual of spring, the best way to begin is to contact the Audubon chapter in Chambersburg. They have active birders, who know where to go that are most likely to hold the funny little bird.
They really are a bit strange because they are part of the shorebird community, but prefer upland swamps rather than the beach.
We have a small pond on our little farm, but we also have a vernal pond that dries up over the summer, but holds water long enough to allow tree frogs and reptiles to breed and lay their eggs unmolested by predator fish.
On a piece of mountain ground we own are three more vernal ponds and soon we should be hearing the woodland amphibians singing their mating songs before laying their eggs in the little snow-melt ponds.
Another singer we’ll hear later on in spring only visits every 17 years. It’s called the 17-year cicada, and will die after laying its eggs in our soils where a new brood will hatch and grow underground for 17 years before once again leaving its nymphal stage and becoming an adult to breed and renew the cycle once more.
Cicadas are harmless to us, except for their constant noise for weeks on end, so enjoy them, collect a few for the insect collection and hook one to catch a fish.
Somehow, fish instinctively grab onto these big insects, if one falls onto the water. Their bodies are greenish brown with red eyes and can be easily tied for the fly fishers out there.
Speaking of fly fishing, the Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Museum is located near the Kitchen Shop in Carlisle. I don’t know what hours they are open, but their displays are worth a visit.
Pennsylvania is the birthplace of fly fishing in the new world. The earliest commercial fly tyer was a Philadelphia innkeeper named Davis Hugh Davis. He was selling flies during the early 1770s. Another Pennsylvanian named Samuel Phillipe created a six-strip bamboo fly rod and soon after it was adopted by other rod makers. It became the standard of fly rods.
Even a sitting governor, Gifford Pinchot, fly fished Pennsylvania and I had a friend, who met Dwight Eisenhower fly fishing the Bushkill one evening. Later, of course, Jimmy Carter fished Falling Spring in Chambersburg before finding a more secluded place on Spruce Creek.
The address for the museum is 101 Shady Lane in Carlisle. Their email is: info@paflyfishing.org.
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