The wildlife in Florida is something else - the sweetest evening chirruping in the trees turned out to be tiny little tree frogs called Spring Peepers! Gorgeous. Apparently there are about 4 species of tree frog that call like birds from the top of the trees, including Green tree frogs and Squirrel tree frogs. When we went out to see the tiny bats hunting mosquitoes on the lake, we could also hear the ordinary sort of frog, though with all the other animal noises, I couldn't make out the soft chittering of the bats. And of course the squirrels (tiny ones) are extraordinarily cute.
I was lucky enough to be shown around Paynes Prairie by my wildlife ecologist host, where we heard the hauntingly pretty call of the Sandhill Cranes (big, beautiful birds - not large pieces of construction machinery...!) as they were 'staging' overhead - swirling in ever higher circles, practising their V-formations and heading out and coming back as they prepare to migrate up to Wisconsin for the summer. Meryl described their song as the sound birds would make if they could purr, and she's exactly right. There were clouds and clouds of them overhead, and on the following day, they flew out over the town, circling up on the thermals with their song filling the air even from their great height - then they were off on their long journey the length of the US. How marvelous to see these great animal migrations marking the seasons for us.
This is the sort of thing that Richard Louv talks about in his wonderful and recently updated book 'Last child in the woods - saving our children from nature deficit disorder'. A must-read, it is a paean to the vanishing contact that we and our children, urban and rural, have with natural surroundings and free play. So this is what urban design and renewal and sustainable agriculture are really about!
No comments:
Post a Comment