Some signs of advancing spring.
This afternoon as we drove back from visiting our daughter and family in Connecticut, I noticed numerous robins foraging on the ground wherever they could find an open spot in the snow cover form the recent storm. As I drove in my driveway here in Kirkville, one flew away from the portion of lawn that had been exposed by the plow blade. Last week I had seen grackles and a couple blue herons. This afternoon my wife also remarked on how the buds on our red maple were expanding and turning their characteristic spring hue.
But winter is hanging tough
But seeing the robins was a small comfort after hearing the weather reports predicting more cold and another potential weekend storm. As if the piles of snow were not enough to indicate exactly how bad the contradiction is this year between the lingering winter and the emerging signs of spring, I was sitting on my porch watching the birds for a few moments while putting on my shoes late this afternoon and suddenly realized that those birds on the thistle feeder were not goldfinches or purple finches. They looked different and they had little red topknots–those were redpolls! They are Canadian birds that only occasionally irrupt into the states when the winter is bad in Canada. I could not believe I had just seen a flock of redpolls and a robin in my lawn on the same supposedly spring day! Now there’s a once in a lifetime birding event for this area, I would say.
