Official spring arrived on schedule yesterday, took a look around, and apparently decided to cede the space back to winter.
We have had snow flurries all morning, driven on a fierce northeast wind. Now, save for what still clings to the highest peaks, most of the clouds have moved westward, the opposite their usual path, and we wait to see what the afternoon will bring.
We already know it’s bringing the wind; I’d trade it for the snow in a heartbeat.
Of course, it’s not really spring here yet, because Meadowlark has not put in an appearance yet. If he had, I imagine he’d look rather like the one above, a bit disgusted that the rain mixed with snow was covering up his meal, perhaps wondering why he bothered to show up to this place if winter wasn’t going to depart.
He won’t show himself today, either, although there’s a possibility later in the week. More often, though, he puts in a first appearance in April, and that is, in truth, when air and ground alike usually begin to warm just enough to believe that summer might yet come.
Eventually.
For now, we are visited by a wide array of bird species, migratory and otherwise, that find something to sustain them here. Some are colonizers, like the starlings, and we have to be watchful lest they overtake the space and resources of the native birds. Then there are the pigeons, otherwise known as rock doves, a small flock of which has mostly broken with the larger one found over the way. They represent the largest plumage diversity either of us has ever seen in a flock of pigeons, never mind one so small: three leucistic, bodies and heads with and red to varying degrees; the grays all over the spectrum, with widely variable color patterning; and two of the flock dressed in white leggings, a variant consisting of two separate recessive genes that produce what are literally vestigial wings in the form of feathers on legs and tops of feet.
Those who are different find sanctuary here.
Of the native species, we have an unusually large flock of red-wing blackbirds here out of season; this is the first time they have wintered here, usually arriving only in May. The Crow Clan is similarly outsized this year and filled with youngsters, one of whom has a single white feather at the outer edge of his right wing. The tiny goldfinches that chose, entirely out of character, to stay for the winter yet remain, and the nuthatches have arrived early, coming and going intermittently.
And the spotted towhee is back. I caught him watching me from the red willows outside the kitchen door, thinking himself cleverly concealed within their still-bare branches.
In truth, he was being clever; I only found him with aid of the camera lens.
At the moment, a wide selection of bird species crowd the feeders, but several of them are notably absent, preferring to stay out of the wind. Even the red-tail has not shown herself as much of late, mostly on the hunt now only in those moments when the wind and weather subside. Nearly all of them, from tiny finches to giant raptors, are already hard at work on the labor of nesting.
A little while ago, the clouds opened a small portal into the blue of the southeastern sky. Now, it’s closing again, only faint traces of cornflower visible between heavy wisps of white. There is still snow falling on the eastern peaks, and more on those to the west, as well. The wind has slowed, by by no means ceased, and it will pick up again before the day is done.
It’s a cold start to the season.
Then again, the only settled part of spring here is its unsettled and unsettling nature anyway.
In other words, it’s all right on schedule.
~ Aji
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