The Voice of Spring

There is perhaps no other event in the natural world that is as characteristic of a season as a full chorus of spring peepers. It is not only that the voices of living things are calling once more after the long silence of winter, there is something about the atmosphere in which the chorus takes place that epitomized the season. There is a certain moist of smell in the air on rainy spring nights, slow mists rise from rafts of ice floating on dark marshes, everywhere on roads through wet areas the small white forms of migrating spring peepers and frogs in woods and ponds appear, and all round you the air will be filled with ahigh bell-like ringing, a little like a distant horse-drawn sleigh. That distant chorus is the voice of the spring peeper, a small tree frog no larger than the end of a little finger. Throughout history naturalists have referred to it as the voice of spring.

In actuality you may be a long way from the pond or marsh where the peepers are calling, The voice of spring peepers can carry as much as a mile on still spring nights, and once you learn to recognize that song, there will be nights when it is difficult to escape their incessant calling. d will accompany you through spring, a sort of background music to the events that will be taking place around you during the season.