Celebrating Signs of Spring

It’s spring again (thank God) and we can put away heavy down coats, clunky boots, thick mittens, and snow shovels. What a winter! Just what we needed after a very heavy snow in January, a blizzard with two to three feet of snow in February. I discovered something new under the heavy snow this winter – snow mold (I had to look it up). It was a filmy white substance that appeared on the lawn once melting started. It went away on its own soon enough.       

I always welcome the cheerful sound of the peep toads this time of year and I’m looking forward to the return of the hummingbirds in a few weeks. Meanwhile the sunflower seed feeder has been a busy place for overwintering birds these past months. It’s birds vs. squirrels, even with a squirrel-proof sunflower seed dispenser (it works pretty well, actually). But the suet blocks we hung up for the woodpeckers, to keep them from rat-a-tatting on the side of the house, attracted voracious squirrels too.

Even using the spicy suet didn’t help (birds apparently can’t taste the hot spice so it’s fine with them). The squirrels managed to dig into the hot stuff too, however. I made a few wisecracks about squirrels wearing sombreros. Thanks go to all the local folks whose efforts have attracted so many bluebirds to Rehoboth. Once a rare sight, these cheerful little birds brighten up a dreary winter day. Squirrels love the mealworms set out for the bluebirds too, of course. It’s a losing battle.

The swallows have returned to Capistrano (I assume) and the herons have returned to Seekonk, though there isn’t a song about them that I’m aware of. The nesting colony in the small wetland behind the fence at Home Depot on Rt. 6 has a couple dozen nests high up in the treetops and it’s fun to watch these huge birds flying back and forth with sticks and nesting material in their large beaks. (Cue another joke about getting building supplies from Home Depot). Soon the young will hatch and you’ll be able to hear the click/clacking of their beaks in the nest. You’ll also frequently find bird-watchers with professional cameras at this spot and it’s a good idea to bring your binoculars for better viewing.

Last spring and early summer we noticed quite a few little fiddler crabs   along the shore in Rhode Island, emerging from the sand and waving a giant claw around. We found them at the Touisset Marsh Wildlife Refuge in Warren (part of the RI Audubon Society) and at the DEM Sapowet Marsh site just north of Fogland in Tiverton, and I’m sure they are emerging at a lot of other places along the shore too. A note on Touisset: it’s easy to get there from here but it’s best not to visit after a heavy rain unless you are wearing hip-waders. It can get pretty swampy.  The trail is only a mile but winds through meadow, wetland, woods, and shoreline. I’ve seen at least one coyote there recently. The coyote saw me too and slipped right back into the woods.

We were sorry to see that the osprey nest high up on a platform right on the bay at the Audubon Center in Bristol was destroyed last year, presumable during a bad summer storm, though one tree-top nest remains there close by the trail. We hope the ospreys will keep coming back to this location. I always feel bad for the “abandoned” osprey chicks whose parents have flown the nest late in the summer, leaving their offspring to figure out migration on their own. Nature is not sentimental and presumably the juvenile birds head south before autumn.

Other springtime places of interest in the East Bay area are Daffodil Days in April at the Blithewold Estate in Bristol, and Colt State Park, including the bike path from there to downtown Bristol. Right next to the park, Coggleshall Farm will offer a couple of farm animal demonstrations that may interest the whole family: oxen weekend is April 19 and 19, where you can watch a team of oxen perform their chores as in days long ago, and then on Sat. May 16, there will be a sheep and wool festival. These are just a few events coming up around here this season. After this awful winter, it will be good to get outside again and enjoy the return of spring.