After a long winter and an even longer COVID confinement, it's time for a change. Many of us are eager to get outdoors and experience the natural world as it greens up. As it turns out, this is precisely the time that nature is putting on one of its most spectacular shows, the annual return of migratory birds.
Millions of birds left Minnesota last fall for warmer places that guaranteed them a diet of insects and fruit. But now they're coming back. They're on the way to their breeding grounds, and for the next few weeks a steady parade of migratory birds will add color, song and flashing movement to our days.
Migration starts slowly: One day in mid-April common loons suddenly appear on a local lake, with acrobatic tree swallows swirling overhead. A pair of osprey reclaim the nesting platform they used last year and sandhill cranes bugle from marshes and open spaces.
Red-winged blackbirds sing "conk-a-ree" from the marshes, gray catbirds "mew" from clumps of vines and pairs of Eastern bluebirds reclaim nest boxes on golf courses and open spaces.
These early birds are all signs of the start of the gathering tide of birds migrating in spring. This annual ritual is one of the most awe-inspiring and reassuring events on nature's calendar. No matter what's taking place in our world, including pandemics, birds go about their lives, responding to their own imperatives.
Some species fly a few hundred miles to get here, but many others travel a thousand miles or more.
Jennifer Vieth, who heads up Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings, is in awe of bird migration, her enthusiasm covering everything from tiny saw-whet owls to turkey vultures to nighthawks.
"That wood thrush we see in Minnesota in the spring has made it all the way back from Venezuela," she notes. "Birds fascinate us with their variety and resilience and the incredible distances they travel."