JOY ALONG THE WAY: RACHELS AND CARSONS ON THE LAWN

One of the joyful, invigorating sounds of spring is the pre-dawn chorus of the robins. You have to get up early to hear it. I suppose one could be out all night and arrive home just before daylight and hear it but then you'd be tired and sleepy and have to get to bed.

When I go out to pick up the morning paper, it being warmer now, I sit for a few minutes on the front steps to listen. It's great to start the day with birdsong when all else is still. To heck with the headlines speaking of Hamas, political unrest, war games, etc. etc.

The robins don't sing in unison, that is, every robin on the same note at the same time. Their song is a phrase of three or four notes, which the mockingbirds steal so readily, overtones and all. If one robin begins on the first note while others may be on the second, third or fourth note and all repeating continuously, you can see (hear?) why it is called a chorus. Sort of like "Row, row, row you boat, etc." Some one robin begins it. Who knows why? And within three minutes all the robins in the vicinity have joined in. It goes on until daylight, then they have to get busy looking for worms and insects. Sort of like giving songs of thanks for the breakfast they know is already prepared for them.

The robins sing at dusk, too, but it is not like their morning song, which is so vibrant and full of purpose as if they are pumping themselves up for the day ahead or just expressing joy that, indeed, another day is coming. At dusk, to me at least, their song is slower with a tinge of plaintiveness. Am I reading my own physical state into their song?

According to Robbins, Bruun and Zin, authors of "Birds of North America," who make sonagrams that are something like the markings on a lie-detector test, only the markings are made by sound detectors, the same bird, like a person in a different geographical area, has a difference in voice. I'd like to hear a Mississippi robin singing in duo with a Missouri robin! Would the Mississippi robin's song be a tad longer, tinged with overtones speaking of whispering pines while the Missouri robin would sing with cadences of quick winds in the prairie grass?

The robins aren't here in full force yet but soon will be. I've counted 25 to 30 at one time in my back yard. Since it is difficult to distinguish the male from the female at a distance, I call half of them Rachel and half of them Carson in honor of Rachel Carson, who had such an impact on the survival of robins by her helping to banish DDT through her book, "Silent Spring."

For several years I've watched robins try to construct a net in the saw-toothed oak near my back steps. They never get it done, abandoning the site in favor of the evergreens, or the pin oaks. They don't go high up in the evergreens like they do in the pin oaks. Sometimes I don't even know there is a nest in the tall pin oaks until the abandoned nest, having served its purpose, has fallen to the ground.

Samantha and I gather what abandoned nests we find and play with them for a while, putting them in unlikely places and filling them with candy eggs for whatever insects wish to feed on them, or putting a big plastic decorated egg in a nest on a porch railing to surprise visitors.

Last year my neighbors were lucky to have robins build a nest on their outside bathroom window ledge. They could see the day-to-day happenings, the pipping of the eggs, emerging of the fledglings, the comical wide open mouths when being fed. They're so trusting, not even open-eyed yet when they open their beaks. Mother robin could drop in a marble for all they knew. But, thank goodness, mother birds aren't evil.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.