Spring chorus frogs and the first skunk cabbage

Pacific chorus frogs (Pseudacris regilla) do not wait for polite weather. On the first mild nights of March they filled the cattail edge of Park Lake with the creaking chorus that is the sound of a Puget Sound spring. The egg masses, if you look, are in the still pockets among last year’s stems — small, and easy to trample.

Skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) came up in the same muck, yellow spathes punching through winter leaves under the cedars. It is a wetland plant, not a weed. It belongs here. So do the rushes, the pond lilies, and the salmonberry that will flower next.

If you walk the shore this month, assume amphibians are in the shallows. Keep feet out of the vegetated edge unless you are doing agreed stewardship work. Spring is when a small pond either stays a pond or starts becoming a drainage problem with a name.