A chorus of songbirds makes morning a symphony
betsyCLAYTON boatingbybetsy@yahoo.com

You don't need to see the sun come up to know it's morning during springtime in Southwest Florida.

Just listen.

"They're there every morning; I don't even know what kind of birds they are," said Jayne Baker, who is more gardener than outdoors-woman, though she spends hours outside.

These days, skin cancer has forced her to be a nighttime gardener. Her husband and an electrician rigged lights across her beloved green space in south Fort Myers. Now she's out there until just before sunrise.

"There's no calm like that time," Baker said.

Agreed.

Each camping trip my family takes offers up pre-dawn magic.

Each time I go running at 6 a.m., I'm stunned by the volume of birdsongs.

Year-round we can hear the symphony, but months such as March make for excellent listening. So many birds are passing through on their way back north. So many feathery creatures are serenading potential mates.

Like Baker said, it doesn't matter if you know what species are singing. Just hearing them matters.

When I can't see them, they sound even sweeter. When the flannel gray sky cloaks the

COURTESY PHOTO Barred Owl

birds in secrecy, it's as if they're telling me to listen more acutely to what they're saying.

In the woods along a creek between Fort Myers and Lake Okeechobee, the sounds were tremendous on a weekend earlier this month.

My husband, daughter and I awoke before dawn in our tent along the banks of Fisheating Creek. We hadn't put the rain fly on the night before, so we could see through the tent's mesh ceiling into the canopy of moss-draped oaks, bald cypress and cabbage palms. They ringed our view, and in the very center was a patch of sky.

We watched it morph from blue velvet to gray flannel and finally to blush.

Birdsongs played the accompaniment.

Owls hooted like they were at a convention. Catbirds mewed like a litter of kittens. Crows boasted of their pre-dawn finds. A hawk screamed. Doves cooed. One pileated woodpecker - the kind Woody Woodpecker was fashioned after - slammed his beak as if he were an axe man on a job tryout.

Then, as if on cue, just before the sun peaked through, two sandhill cranes announced themselves, practically honking like Canada geese, only doing it in their rattling kar-r-r-r-o-o-o. We heard them before we saw them.

Glorious. What a glorious morning.

The thing is, in Southwest Florida, you don't have to be in a campground to experience such a chorus.

Baker lives on only three-quarters of an acre off McGregor Boulevard amid the hustle and bustle of an urban area. But you'd never know it in early morning.

"Three o'clock in the morning is when the birds begin to sing," she said.

It's a lovely treasure for those of us who take time to listen instead of waiting for sunrise to notice the avians around us.

- Betsy Clayton is a freelancer based on Pine Island and also is Lee County Parks & Recreation's waterways coordinator. Contact her at boatingbybetsy@ yahoo.com.

Before Sunrise Sampler

The hour before sunrise offers a symphony of bird songs around Southwest Florida's woods. Here's a sample from a recent trip to Fisheating Creek campground in Glades County:

>>Barred owls: hoo, hoo, hoo-hoo; sounds like "Who cooks for you?"

>>Catbird: kitten-like mewing; even cat-lovers can be fooled

>>Crow: caw-caw

>>Mourning dove: coo-ah, coo, coo, coo; low, mournful (hence its name)

>>Pileated woodpecker: cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk; rising and falling in pitch and volume

>>Red-bellied woodpecker: chuck-chuck-chuck or churrr

>>Red-shouldered hawk: shrill scream kee-yeear

>>Robin: cheer-up, cheerily, cheer-up, cheerily; rich caroling notes

>>Sandhill cranes: loud, rattling, honking kar-r-r-r-o-o-o

>>Warblers: dry trilling