Signs and sounds of spring are arriving

QUASQUETON -- A new song greeted my ears on Tuesday morning, the first day of meteorological spring.

It was the familiar whistle of the robin, which most humans cannot describe without resorting to some variant of the word “cheer.”

To me it sounds like “cheery cheery cheerily” – a welcome counterpoint to the raspy buzzing and droning of the starlings that have provided the dominant neighborhood soundtrack in recent months.

Given March’s warm start, I expected robins to cover the snow-free lawns of my hometown by midweek.

As I write this on Wednesday, however, no additional robins have arrived, and Tuesday’s lone robin has apparently left town, discouraged perhaps by the worm-chilling presence of unthawed soil.

Nor have the red-winged blackbirds - a more reliable harbinger of spring - arrived in my neighborhood, though a southbound traveler would likely meet them somewhere in Iowa.

In my fruitless searches for robins and redwings, a few other legitimate but less flamboyant signs of spring have come to my attention.

On Tuesday, for example, as I stepped outside my front door, a common housefly, whose annoyances have been missing since last fall’s first hard frost, flew into my forehead.

The occasional roadkill raccoon signals that furbearers are foraging for food after a lean and hungry winter.

The sap is flowing, as evidenced by the taps and tubes protruding from neighborhood maple and box elder trees.

The season’s first noisy and disorderly flock of northbound snow geese flew over town Wednesday morning, their arrival heralded a mile away by nasal honks reminiscent of a pack of hounds.

The definitive sign of spring (and my personal favorite) – the ice-free status of the Wapsipinicon River – remains in abeyance.

The winter’s subnormal accumulation of snow melted gradually without appreciably raising the river’s level, and without the lift of rising water to break up the ice, it likely will stay where it is until it melts.

In the meantime, despite fervent seeking and hoping, winter’s monochrome monotony persists.

Crows, starlings and other winter birds still dominate the soundscape, and the newly bare winter-yellowed landscape holds only the faint green promise of colorful songbirds, mellow loam, flopping fish, gobbling turkeys and fruiting mushrooms.