It looks like winter but sounds like spring!

Welcome to Listening in Nature, where I'll be posting what I hear in the NE Ohio’s natural world throughout the year. We'll listen to bird songs and calls, the songs of frogs and toads, the rich diversity of cricket and katydid song in late summer and early autumn, and more.  I'll share my study of the songs of Earth's first musicians close to home and my investigation of their communication and their concert stages.

This is an excellent time to begin the journey.  Although it is February 17th and there is snow on the ground, birds are singing everywhere I go.   At the Holden Arboretum in Lake County on February 6th, a great deal of bird song was already underway.  

I’ll begin with observations and questions about the earliest bird songs of spring. Who are the first birds to sing? Is it ever possible to identify a specific individual by something unique in his song repertoire? And what about some of those curiously chaotic songs we may hear very early in the season?

I invite you listen with me, and to listen to everything you hear in your neighborhoods and near where you work as well as where you may hike in our parks and preserves. There is so much to hear – and so much to learn!