For some, spring heralds the arrival of green leaves and flowers. For others, it is a time to plant the garden in anticipation of summer’s bounty. For many spring signals the opportunity to fall asleep each night to nature’s orchestra and to awaken to her symphony in the morning.

After a long winter, nature lovers look forward to the first warm days when they can throw open windows and feel and smell spring’s promised renewal. Fresh breezes clear long-harbored winter scents. A day of air circulating through the house freshens cooking and pet odors. Hanging bedding and curtains on the outside line multiplies the whole experience. No aerosol purchased from a store matches the sweetness of breezes floating across miles of open prairie.

Toasty rays of sunshine enhance that effect. For those who have them, lilacs and blooming fruit trees boost the ambience as their perfumes waft by on invisible airstreams.

However, scent is simply an accompaniment to the music of spring. It sets the stage for upcoming concerts. As soon as it is warm enough, crank open or raise those windows to capture seasonal sounds. Those living near water will hear the rhythms of courting peepers. Little frogs make big noise when it comes to attracting mates. Different species imitate the shaking of a bag full of marbles or the sound of a finger running across a comb. To add more variety, owls and night hawks swoop through nearby trees searching for late suppers, announcing success with a series of screeches and squawks–like a string section warming up.
When things settle down, listen for crickets to join the recital.

How amazing to think the simple rubbing of two bristly legs together can create lively tunes and clue listeners in to the temperature at the same time. As nights warm, listen for the deep bass of bull frogs calling from nearby pools. You can almost feel their deep baritone vibrate through your bones. Add the rising hum of cicadas building to a rousing crescendo and you have a complete symphony. After enjoying an evening of original music, temperatures drop, ending nature’s nightly lullaby.

The best of part of sleeping with an open window this time of year is knowledge that another concert begins at dawn with entirely new orchestration. Before you detect the sun’s first rays, wakening birds begin vocal exercises punctuated by a few isolated sharps. It is impossible to ignore the good cheer enlivening the day, so crawl out of bed and stand at the window to watch a private concerto of performing robins, finches, jays, and larks. While they act as though they’re unaware of an audience, they sense its presence and sing more loudly. This recital beats using an alarm clock to start the day.

Life is full of simple pleasures for those who seek them. Discovering nature’s perfume and music is as simple as opening windows on spring’s warm evenings. So, go ahead, pop the latch, pull up the shade, and kick back for some of the easiest listening around.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

I have to come clean about something; I am an addict! I’m addicted to Fox News on my phone and check it several times each day, often first thing in the morning for starters.

The story that caught my eye one morning this week concerned the California Fish and Wildlife’s (CFW) discovery of more than 100 dead hawks and other protected birds on an 80 acre property in Northern California. A neighbor called authorities that someone was shooting at birds and he thought they were hawks. One captain with the CFW told Fox news he had been with the department for 21 years and had never seen anything like that in a poaching case in his career.

Hawks and owls are federally protected right along with eagles, and fines in the thousands of dollars will be levied against someone convicted of killing them. That California landowner better have a golden goose! I remember one old guy who lived at the nursing / retirement home where I worked that once told me “All hawks need shootin’.” It seems he thought all hawks and owls were nothing but chicken thieves. While I suppose over the years a fair number of domestic fowl have met an untimely demise at the claws of hawks and owls, MOST have been snagged by coyotes, bobcats, skunks, coon’s, possums and even feral cats. Hawks and owls are deadly rodent hunters and I’d hate to be around to see the spike in the field mouse and rat populations if there were suddenly no hawks or owls.

I remember one fall day several years ago watching combines harvest a field of soybeans and trying to count the number of hawks of various descriptions feasting on field mice and rats stirred up amidst the litter of dead soybean leaves on the ground under the plants. I lost count at thirty birds. Red tail hawks, Kansas’ most common hawks are partial-migrants. That means that many, but not all red tails from northern climates migrate into southern states to find milder winters which mean easier hunting for them. That’s why we see so many more hawks in Kansas from mid-October through spring.

Another partial migrant that comes to Kansas is the northern harrier. Again, many but not all of them from northern states come south seeking milder winters and easier hunting. Northern harriers are the large dark hawks seen in large numbers here over the winter that hunt by gliding and slowly rocking back-and-forth low over CRP fields and pastures. They have falcon-shaped wings and broad wedge-shaped tails highlighted with white stripes across their tail. I love to sit in our deer blind in early December and watch them hunt the long grass waterway that stretches for several hundred yards in front of our blind. This year there were two there every morning; sometimes they were both in the air at once, sometimes one sat on a fence post while the other harassed it by making strafing flights past it so close it nearly knocked it from its perch.

Finally one afternoon I was privileged to watch one of the harriers make a catch. It had been slowly and methodically working that grass waterway when it suddenly went to the ground. A few seconds later it was in the air again, slowly weaving back-and-forth mere feet in the air over that same small patch of grass and brush where it had gone to the ground. Suddenly it darted out into the bean stubble beside the waterway and pounced on something too small for me to see from where I sat a couple hundred yards away. Evidently the big hawk’s presence had unnerved a mouse, rat or a small rabbit enough to make a run for it in the open, and the big guy was rewarded with a snack, which it sat and ate there for ten or fifteen minutes.

Owls are my favorite birds. You’ve probably heard me gush about my brother’s cabin in the wooded hills of southeastern Ohio. It has a beautiful porch running the length of it on the front, and sitting there after dark or just before sunrise during the spring and summer rewards a patient and quiet listener with an indescribable symphony of wildlife sounds. The main musicians are coyotes, great horned owls, barred owls, screech owls and whippoorwills, often heard together in the same sitting. A couple great horned owls often perch near our deer blind in the predawn darkness, sometimes sounding as though one of them is perched atop the blind. Their soft, raspy “coos” in the darkness are at the same time eerie and soothing, as they seem completely unconcerned by the problems of the coming day.

I struggle to understand why anyone would want these raptors dead. If they are losing poultry and have actually witnessed a bird of prey carry one away, they have a case, but still cannot kill them, in which case they need to find a way to pen-up the poultry. If they are losing poultry and blaming that on hawks and owls without proof, they need to look elsewhere at some of the other critters mentioned above. If you don’t live in the country, park on a deserted side road near a woodlot with your windows down some calm night about dusk and listen to the symphony; I think you’ll become a fan! Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].