May-soundways | High Spring | Pelham Hills

The Hills in Purple Syllables, c. 1865 (Fr1026A)

The Snell’s meteorological record for May indicates a month of marked fluctuations: while the average temperature was recorded at 60º F, the low reading on the thermometer was 40º F and the high reading reached 86º F. Frost covered the ground on May 2, but by the sixth of the month it was “hot + clear,” and the note for May 9 reads simply “Summer day.”  All through May small constellations of rainy and windy days—May 1 [“rain a.m.”], 3 [“rain a.m., squalls”], 4 [“many clouds”], 7 [“a little rain in the evening”], 8 [“sprinkles a.m., thundershowers p.m.”], 11 [“Lowery”], 12 [“mist 8 am”], 13 [“Lowery. Distant thundershower”], 14 [“Lowery”], 15 [“Lowery; sprinkles, showers”], 16 [“very showery”], 17 [“Thundershowers about”], 18 [“Showers about; sprinkles”], 24 [“Thundershowers”], 26 [“Lowery, sprinkles”], 27 [“Rain AM”]—alternated with small constellations of fair days until the end of the month when the fair days came in a single long wave: May 5 [“Fine day”], 6 [“hot + clear”], 7 [“Pleasant”], 9 [“Summer day”], 12 [Fair evening], 19 [“Fine day”], 22 [“Fine, cool day”], 23 [“Fine day”], 25 [“PM Fair”], 28 [“Fine AM”], 29 [AM clear”], 30 [“Fine day”]. Atmospheric symptoms associated with hotter temperatures also appeared. On May 10, a recorder noted  “smoke, distant lightning NW”; on May 20, the same recorder made the note “Smoky, hazy”; and the final day of May was recorded as “Hot, clear.” All month long, South and South-east winds swept through New England.

In the scatterplot for May, the bird species count reaches over 150—the highest number in the yearly cycle.

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Now the listener has come down from the height of the Pelham Hills into the chamber of the Valley where the wild birds sound a continuous, ecstatic carol.

In the first “fine days” of May waves of Warblers stream into the Northern Hemisphere: Black-and-white Warblers, Golden-winged Warblers, Tennessee Warblers, Orange-crowned Warblers, Nashville Warblers, Parula Warblers, Cerulean Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Magnolia Warblers, Cape May Warblers, Black-throated Blue Warblers, Yellow-rumped Myrtle Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, Blackburnian Warblers, Chestnut-sided Warblers, Bay-breasted Warblers, Blackpoll Warblers, Pine Warblers, Prairie Warblers, and Palm Warblers.

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And even before the bright wave of Warblers is over, a second current of birds flows into May: Flycatchers, Swallows, Thrushes of all kinds, Orioles, Grosbeaks, Buntings, Scarlet Tanagers, Redstarts, Pewees, Rails, Sandpipers, and Plovers…

Beneath them the subsong of those already nesting flutters another story — the mystery of refuge. 

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May is an ambush of birds. 

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An inundation.

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In the last fine days of the month, the planet passes under the song of a hermit thrush.

 

 

 

 

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