First Red-wings, Henne

The great awakening—the real start of spring—often begins in the wetlands where the first sustained warmth stirs the mud and brings organisms back to life. You hear this most obviously in the frog calls: the quacks of the Wood Frogs and the bell-like vocals of the Spring Peepers. But in a typical year, there's a sound the comes before the batrachians begin to chorus. That would be the "oonk-a-ree" songs of the Red-winged Blackbirds, calls that for the first time this year rang out over the marshes as the males today announced their arrival from winter refuges down south. The guys are the show-stoppers in this species, with glossy black bodies and a striking, mostly scarlet epaulet—the females are drab and feathered for hiding during the nesting season—and among the many Native American descriptive names for these exceedingly common birds is this one, in Ojibwa: memiskondinimaanganeshiinh. It means, according to Wikipedia, "a bird with a very red damn-little shoulder-blade." To be sure, the "damn-little" expands quite a bit when the Redwings are singing to lay claim to a territory or to try to sell their suitability as mates. It's hard to say whether she's buying.