Pennsylvania Game News - March 2017 - 53

egg-laying.
I even hear them during the morning
and afternoon, somewhere behind the
spruce grove.
Mammals also are stirring.
One of the first signs of spring is a
porcupine eating buds high in the only
surviving American elm tree in our
exclosure.
They also graze on grass like woodchucks - behavior I see every spring.
While eating, they pay little attention
to me, even as I walk within 8 feet of
them, watching as they snap off and eat
one grass stalk after another.
If I get too close to one, it will look
up, slowly turn around, and erect its
rosette of quills. That's when I turn
around and leave it to its grass banquet.
On occasional early March days, I
am lucky enough to encounter eastern
chipmunks chasing mates.
Last March, I watched a chase while
sitting on a log that was among the
runway of fallen trees being used by the
chipmunks. A couple times, the female
chipmunk ran 30 feet up a tree to a pileated woodpecker hole and took refuge
from her male pursuer.
Then, on the log on which I was
sitting, the pair paused, and the female
zipped past my feet and escaped.
To witness the culmination of a
courtship that happens during March, I
spend hours at our vernal pond observing wood frogs.
After a winter spent freeze-dried in
their burrows, they rise and hop to their
natal pond. The males arrive first - by
the dozens. And they sound like quacking ducks as they call while swimming.
One warm, overcast day, I encounter
100 wood frogs calling and swimming
MARCH 2017

in our vernal pond, as I creep from tree
to tree without being seen.
A mating ball of masked, brown,
males tumble over a larger, pink female,
with the action drawing two more males
from a tiny bear wallow 20 feet away.
I move closer - less than 10 feet
away - and sit to watch.
The frogs pay me no attention. A few
climb out of the pond and sit on logs in
and around the water and continue calling, their bodies shaking with the effort.
On days later in March, the pond
is quieter and the few wood frogs left
much shier.
Still, when I slowly circle the pond,
I see in its murky depths large clusters
of jelly-like balls filled with eggs, and
I know I'll soon be watching the metamorphosis from eggs to tadpoles to tiny
wood frogs that leave the pond to spend
their lives in the leaf litter.
Sometime on a late, warm, March
morning, the eastern garter snakes
emerge from the ground near our old
well.
At first, the smaller males move
around aimlessly. Then, a larger female
appears and the males rush to form a
mating ball around her.
Only one will inseminate her, but it's
impossible to tell which one. The males
emerge, join, leave, go back into holes,
return, and finally the ball disintegrates
as the snakes slither off in all directions.
By late March, the first chipping
sparrows return, and the first eastern
towhees call.
Ruffed grouse drum and migrating
yellow-bellied sapsuckers mew like
kittens.
My favorite season is well on its way,
and I'm grateful to be alive and able to
appreciate my "arena of delight" that is
spring in Pennsylvania.
53
Pennsylvania Game News - March 2017

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