The sights and sounds of March in the Fox Valley
March is a dreary month. It's gray, it's muddy, it's cold. March, said storyteller Garrison Keillor, is the month that God made “to show people who don't drink what a hangover feels like.”
Given the prevailing unpopularity of this month, I'd like to root for the underdog and highlight the not-so-obvious positives about March.
Skunk cabbage
For starters, there's Skunk cabbage. As lovely and as fragrant as its namesake, this is our first almost-spring wildflower. Skunk cabbage thrives in out-of-the-way wet pockets of woodlands.
Searching for this hidden gem is half the fun of welcoming spring. The search entails a trek through the woods along a half-frozen trail, stepping over fallen logs and schlepping through muck and mire. Then, if you're lucky, voilà ! There, poking up through the lingering snow are the first shoots of skunk cabbage. These shoots are pointed, fleshy structures called spathes. Each spathe is colored in a mottled pattern of greenish-purplish-yellowish brown, a color combination that would make an interior designer cringe. Within the spathe, numerous flowers huddle together on a structure called a spadix. These flowers are blah little blobs of dull maroon. Their fragrance has been described as “a suspicion of skunk, putrid meat, and garlic.” All the better to attract pollinators such as carrion flies.
And the coolest thing of all is that the compact bundle of flowers is not cool, it's literally a little furnace with the ability to generate heat. By a process known as thermogenesis, skunk cabbage flowers can raise the temperature inside the spathe to a toasty 70 degrees Fahrenheit, even in the midst of March snow showers. Skunk cabbage is, arguably, wonderful in all its weirdness.
Maple sugaring
If botanical weirdness isn't your thing and you're more into the sweet and sublime, nature has other treats to offer this month. March is synonymous with maple sugaring in our neck of the woods.
It's at this time of year that winter loosens its grip and yields the sweet elixir of spring. Sugar-loaded liquid sap courses through the tree trunks. For hundreds of years people have tapped into this wellspring and collected sap to make maple syrup.
The process has modernized over the years, but during the forest preserve district's maple sugaring days, we opt for the tried-and-true method using hand drill, spile and pail. When the first turn of the bit produces a trickle of clear sap, people always let out a spontaneous cheer. But wait, that's not all! After hooking the metal pail on the spile there's silence and then “plink, plunk, plink!” The first tentative drops of sap in the pail produce the sweetest music of spring.
Well, some of the sweetest music …
Bird song
The songs of red-winged blackbirds are faintly audible in the fields in early March. These migrating birds are among the earliest arrivals of the new year, and their debut is always a hopeful sign. The males come first; the females will come later.
The males sing their way north, reticent at first but growing bolder as they stake out territory atop cattails and grasses. As March progresses, the dapper black birds with red and yellow epaulets sing more boisterously, proclaiming the title to their newfound real estate.
March is also the month of some crazy courtship in the avian world. On any given night this month, small plump birds called woodcocks are out cavorting in fields and prairies. It's one of those “you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it” things. Go out to a prairie near some woods at dusk. Wait patiently at the edge of the timber as the daylight fades. Listen.
“BZZZZT!” There's an electric buzzer — wait, no, it's not a buzzer, it's a bird. Listen some more. The sound comes from another part of the field, then another, with increasing urgency.
Now, watch. If you're lucky you'll catch a glimpse of a bird ascending in large circles toward the heavens. If you strain your eyes, you'll see the phantom disappear into darkness above. Keep watching. The silhouette will reappear as the bird makes a breakneck descent. At the instant that suicide seems imminent, the woodcock will bank, averting its crash dive just feet from the ground. Somewhere in the shroud of dusk nearby, there's a discriminating female waiting to be impressed by the aerial maneuvers of these foolhardy males.
Speaking of dusk, March is the month when the length of daylight increases noticeably. The spring equinox occurs in March, usually on the 21st of the month, signifying the point in time when the length of daylight equals the length of darkness. From the equinox on, spring begins in earnest. Theoretically.
Bear in mind that March is a month of setbacks, and it's not uncommon for a snow squall to dispel any illusion of certainty about spring. We Midwesterners are long-suffering, through, and with patience we endure the fickle weather. After all, what are our options?
A warm day will come again in March, predictably unpredictable, and the first chorus frogs will begin to call. Although called a “chorus” their sounds are hardly musical. They've been likened to a finger running across a plastic comb. Hearing the first brave souls of the amphibian world proclaiming their renaissance is cause for celebration in March. It won't be long until chorus frogs are joined by a cacophony of spring peepers, American toads, leopard frogs, and green frogs completing the splendid soundscape of spring.
March is all this and much more. If you've thought of this month as a blah in-between time when winter has lost its sparkle and spring is yet a distant dream, go out to a nearby forest preserve and think again. You'll be pleasantly surprised, and before you know it April will be here.
Ÿ Valerie Blaine is a naturalist with the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. You may reach her at blainevalerie@kaneforest.com.