Our native (actually, re-introduced) turkeys—Meleagris gallopavo—are as fastidious as other avians hereabouts. To maintain appearance, comfort and health, they bill-groom frequently with the aid of a long and flexible neck:

And even when a hygiene error occurs, they have the good taste to appear embarrassed:

Poking and preening do not suffice to control feather mites and other parasites, however. And absent a suitable puddle, or perhaps even in preference in some cases, dirt will do.

More than most birds, turkeys wander around scratching up all sorts of soils, leaves, gravel and other friable surfaces in search of edibles. The power, depth and rate of this strip-mining can be impressive; here, about two square yards of carefully applied mulch were largely cleared in under 15 minutes:

When the ground is dry and the topsoil especially fine-grained, harrowing for seeds and grubs may reveal another opportunity. On open ground everywhere around here, one encounters freshly tilled patches of dust, usually with some degree of depression. Though also employed by mammals for a similar purpose, these usually show tracks and other signs of creation and use by birds. Even absent identifying footprints or claw marks, the general size of the bowl correlates pretty well with that of the user. In this case,

a pair of hollows (perhaps the first wasn’t dusty enough?),  each more than one foot wide, was made by a large tom turkey. Forming and fluffing such a bath can take two or three minutes, at the quick end for this light mix of wood chips and glacial-flour subsoil.

A session in the prepared bath typically takes about three to five minutes, and looks something like this, with violent contortions

followed by settling down in the warm cavity, resting and perhaps looking around for potential predators attracted by the noisy and dusty commotion

followed by more of same (“lather, rinse, repeat”)

and then a final shake-out

before striding away clean and shining:

 

A frog is just an egg’s way of making another egg…

 

So many signs indicate the onset of spring: mechanical events like the vernal equinox, human inventions like tax day or a school vacation, mutable natural rhythms that follow the particularity of each unique pass around the sun. Of these, some are triggered by a certain accumulation of degree of atmospheric or subterranean warmth; by the summing of so many hours of direct sunlight or of days with so many hours of sunlight. Germinations and sproutings, emergence from hibernation and wandering to new grounds, nest-making and egg-laying. And some have a much simpler threshold: at least hereabouts, the first night after Lupercalia when Farrar Pond is ice-free, the ground is moist and the air above 45°F, frogs go on the move. If it be warmer and raining, the moon full, so much the better. But hardy explorers seem to venture forth pretty much as soon as they are able, and are immediately audible (and, in the morning, visible) in a nearby isolated pool.

Artifact or natural, frogs breed by preference in small waters lacking a steady connection with larger. Else, fish and other aquatic predators move in and eat eggs, tadpoles and frogs. So a garden pond that overflows onto the ground, rather than into a stream, is ideal. Here is one, as it appeared on March 21st—the first full day of spring:

These inches of snow soon vanished, leaving a thin crust of ice and exposing the net that kept blowing leaves from choking the pond:

By March 28, all ice had melted, allowing the net and its burden to be rolled easily off its railings

and parked for next winter. That very night, despite cool temperatures and dry ground, the first explorers made their way up from Farrar Pond to this breeding site. Known to some returnees or found by random hop?

In ones and twos, they floated around for the fun to begin while keeping a hemispherical eye out for local edibles:

Melt-off also revealed a small tragedy, of a type unprecedented here:

at least one dead frog and dozens of pale tadpoles. The pond being too deep to freeze entirely, they might have been caught cold-stunned and frozen just beneath the surface. Or perhaps anoxia (it is a very small pond, and rubber-lined) or some disease or parasite. Whatever the cause, one may hope that it does not recur.

These ghosts’ warning was not enough to prevent further losses when the pond again skimmed over one clear night, and not everyone made it home before the door clinked shut:

(There might have been many more losses; avian and mammalian scavengers work quickly.) Then it warmed and rained. By April 1st, at least 28 frogs were visibly active:

That’s just a little patch, and it all looked like that. The word lek describes both a kind of frantic collective activity prior to mating, and also the location in which it occurs. In such a a small pond, it’s nothing but lek coast-to-coast.

Eventually, mysterious and sometimes inappropriate approaches are made

and connections achieved:

But even in a mid-spring day’s dream, the course of true love rarely does run smooth

as other players try to horn in on the amplexus,

in some cases coming more than close:

That particular pair shook off interlopers, navigated under a rock shelf provided for the purpose, and completed their assignation in protected darkness. To no end, alas, as he was a wood frog (Rana sylvatica) and she a green (R. clamitans), and these miscegenation laws are largely ineluctable. Romeo and Juliet after all?

The happy result of better-starred liaisons, taking advantage of last-year’s lily and lotus stems for stabilization just below the surface:

The  need for such anchoring is one of many reasons reasons why too-fastidious cleanup does not make for an optimal ecology.

At this point, last year’s bullfrog tadpoles would normally be attacking the rich new food source, leaving just a few survivors, but they were frozen out of the feast.

With sunlight plus nutrients from those decaying leaves, algae quickly colonize the gel, consuming embryonic waste and providing extra oxygen

while the little ones (here, in another egg mass nearby) develop quickly in the sun’s warmth:

Their mission accomplished, adult participants relax, sun-bathe, and await the arrival of succulent insects: