116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Spring signs never get old
Wild Side column: Robins, red-wing blackbirds, geese and open water fishing are good signals
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QUASQUETON — Just sitting here on Monday, the second day of daylight savings time, watching the steam rise off my maple sap and thinking that the onset of spring — this, my 77th — never gets old.
The robins, huddled for months in their nearby winter haunts, descended en masse last week onto the lawns of town, hoping to supplement their subsistence diet of seeds and berries with juicy, protein-rich earthworms.
Hundreds of Canada geese — until recently confined to the river’s swiftest, most freeze-resistant stretch — have paired up and moved out to happier places, loudly defending nesting territories up and down the ice-free river.
In my neck of the woods the springing forward of clocks coincided exactly with a true harbinger of spring — the arrival of male red-winged blackbirds.
Clinging to cattails, perching on shrubs and fenceposts, their brilliant shoulder patches gleaming in the morning sun, they practiced their lilting conk-la-ree mating calls and should have them perfected when their prospective brides declare with their arrival, yet weeks away, that, yes, spring is truly here.
The birds, who sing at daybreak no matter what the clock says, and I, a retiree who seldom has to be on time, took daylight savings time in stride.
Ice out on the Wapsie, a definitive sign of spring in my hometown, can be dramatic when a rising river lifts, cracks and carries away thick floes and smashes them on the boulders of the rock arch rapids.
No drama this spring. No thick ice at the end of a mild winter. No runoff from rain or snowmelt in a region stuck in moderate drought.
On March 5, just when it appeared that the last angling-obstructing ice would have to melt in place, powerful north winds, whose gusts clocked in at 58 mph, blew it out of there. As a lifelong wind hater and first-time beneficiary, I finally understood the proverb: It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.
Next came my personal favorite sign of spring — the first bite of the open water season.
By early March my central nervous system receptor cells crave the stimulation that can only be provided by the crisp toink of a gamefish inhaling a tungsten jig at the end of stretchless braided line running through the eyes of a sensitive rod.
On the first Friday of Lent, two days after the ice went out, something unseen arrested the slow progress of my jig through the water, and a subtle toink registered a quantum leap forward in the progress of the seasons.
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