Cold Spell

A frosty morning... like a little "ha! ha!" to all the people who planted things outside for Mother's Day!  Last frost of 2013 spring = May 12-13???

Growing Pains

Birds mature so quickly, relative to humans, that it's as if our entire youth is encapsulated in one short season.      I watched a juvenile robin the other day, and it seemed to have the clumsiness of toddlerhood simultaneously with the awkward appearance of the middle-school "'tweens" and the cocky idiocy of the teenage years.  A dangerous combination, to be sure.  He (or she) hopped around, his flight feathers looking spiky and messy, unsure of his destination... but sure he was going somewhere!

When I was in 7th grade, my teacher had a poster hanging in the classroom that said (this is paraphrased), "Teenagers -- tired of being harassed by your stupid parents?  Act now, move out, get a job, pay your own bills, while you still know everything!"  That poster was being derisive towards human teenagers, but in the animal world, this over-confidence must have great evolutionary value.  The time to figure it all out -- and I mean all... flying, nesting, mating, all the challenges of being an adult -- is so terribly fleeting.  Hesitation is tantamount to death.

So enjoy fledgling season, folks, and be thankful you don't have to go through any of those life stages again... let alone at the same time!

D-Day!

I have been waiting for this day for months!  As I ran through the newly flooded back loop of Rollins Savannah... clad, I might add, in shorts and a tank top... a dragonfly swooped past my head.  YEA!  It wasn't the only thing that the strong wind carried my way... the cloyingly sweet perfume of blooming magnolias.  The aroma of outdoor grilling.  When the mercury first tops 80, everything comes out to play.

Also seen:  trout lilies blooming.  Baby geese (on 4/28).  Pasqueflower blooming.  First prairie smoke blooming.  Dandelions in full bloom.

Ick.

The nice weather lasted... 1 day!  Yesterday was rainy -- a cold front coming through, and by evening the rain was really sleet.  This morning dawned COLD.  And muddy.  

Still, spring is marching on.  Goldfinches are gold, and daffodils are blooming.  Some shrubs -- black currants, lilacs -- are starting top leaf out, so that we can see a springy green haze in some places when we look across lawns and fields.  Catkins are finally fluffy on willows, aspen, and other trees...  

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day dawned sunny and bright -- the nicest day of the year so far, I think... relatively warm, not terribly windy.  Of course, the nice weather brought the first ticks of the season, as well.  With the good, comes the nasty.

My Seasonal Update

I haven't been motivated to blog lately... but that doesn't mean I haven't been making notes about the appearance (or lack thereof) of spring... and sometimes composing poetic paragraphs in my head that never make it onto paper (keyboard).  Finally, however, I feel the need to have a record of data that I can look back on.  

Winter may have started weak this year, but it ended strong.  There was a weak in early March when the ground was covered with a foot of snow -- we had 2 largish late-winter snowfalls -- and everyone was walking around talking about how last year on this day it was 80 degrees.  None of that in 2013.  Spring is arriving reluctantly.  I can only hope that means when it comes, it will park itself firmly, not let winter creep back in!

Yesterday was ice off... the latest ice off in the past 7 years at least.  Here's the data I've kept, indicating that we're over a month past last year's date, weeks later than average... and indeed, it's the only April ice off date I've seen!

2006 -- Mar 10

2007 -- Mar 18

2008 -- Mar 31

2009 -- Mar 9

2010 -- Mar 18

2011 -- Mar 18

2012 -- Feb 22!

2013 -- April 4!

Meanwhile, plants are similarly slow compared to last year.  In 2012, spring ephemerals flowered in March -- we had violets and Pasqueflower, bloodroot and others... This year... not a lot.  Crocuses are in full bloom, daffodil and tulip leaves are out with frost-burned tips, but they're not that tall yet.  There's no green haze across the water as willows get that springy green... even the catkins have been slow to swell.  (Vernal witch hazel is in bloom, and silver maples have flowered... that's about it that I've noticed, plant-wise.)  Redwing black birds are about the only thing that kept to the normal spring schedule this year.

Yesterday, I saw a cluster of ants surrounding something on the sidewalk, and last weekend when we went for a walk, some gnatty things were flying around my head, so I guess the insect workld is starting to come back to life, too. 

OK, back to work!  

Happy Winter!

Winter Solstice... the ray of hope in our darkest days.  In science, as in life, it may be that as we stand on the precipice, looking at the beginning of months of hardship and trial, things start to get just a little bit brighter.  Winter truly is a season of scarcity and challenges for animals that don't have the human luxuries of central heating and grocery store food.  Plants still face months of dormancy before they will green with new life, so food sources are severely limited... caches painstakingly collected and stored in the fall, a few leftover seeds, bark and twigs.  The succulent newness of leafy greens is so far away it's hardly imaginable, even to me.  And this at the time when the body most needs energy to heat itself.  It would be a bleak outlook, I think, if animals had the capacity to look forward into the future.  

And yet... after months of our days growing oppressively short, they will... almost imperceptibly at first... start to lengthen.  Today is the winter solstice, when the earth's tilt causes the sun to hit (at 5:12 am local time) its southern-most angle of shine upon the earth's surface.  For the next 6 months, as we travel around the sun on our topsy-turvy cosmic journey, we northern-hemisphere-dwellers will get the sun's light more and more directly each day.    Eventually the sun's rays will shine upon us directly enough to start to warm the earth's surface.  And so the first calendar day of winter is also the day it begins to recede, to gradually lose its fight.  Our glimmer of light just as the hard times begin.

And winter this year tried to start with a show of seasonal power.  Now, I don't want to minimize the first winter storm of the year for those around the Midwest who were involved in traffic accidents or travel delays or whatever, but... for us, it was kind of a bust.  It began with rain... steady, drumming rain that kept me awake Wednesday night and into the small hours of Thursday morning, and continued to fall all day Thursday.  The world was wet and puddly and dreary and drippy... and relatively warm, hitting the mid-40s.  The forecasters' predicted snowfall decreased as the hour of temperature drop drew near... but we still didn't even hit the large 2-6 inch target that meteorologists left open for us.  Around 4 pm Thursday the rain turned to sleet and wet heavy snow, which did mess with rush hour but didn't last very long into the night.  I went to bed with my driveway's blacktop still showing and I awoke to the same sight.  

That's not to say that winter didn't dawn with a fierce bite.  Piercing winds whip across the prairies and fields.  I look out, through wildly shaking locust branches, at a wind turbine whose motion is so fast it looks like a blurry circle.  The small amount of snow that fell has frozen solid, a crunchy crust covering cars and pavement, trees and grasses.  Now that the sun has finally risen on this shortest day of the year, the frozen drops on the tree branches catch the light and sparkle.  Diamonds all over are spectacular holiday decorations.  Plus, it's cold -- in the mid 20s but those winds from the north make it feel much colder.

And this... is just the beginning!  Happy first day of winter!