Spring arrives with a boom

The first day of spring wasn’t my only first on Sunday. The first eastern phoebe of the new season announced itself right outside my bedroom window before the day was properly light. The bird sat on a branch right outside my bedroom window, calling its familiar “fee-bee,” and woke me up, apparently feeling that its call to spring was more important than my sleep.

And then came the thunderstorm, another harbinger of warmer weather. The thunder resulted in a 60 lb. dog jumping on the bed, and was followed a moment later by pounding sleet, a remnant of the outgoing season. It was that kind of morning.

Today, another thunderstorm started the morning and now the clouds are so low it’s dark even at noon. Spring weather is always notoriously variable here, and this one is starting out in stereotypical fashion.

Visible signs of new spring growth are still likely a few weeks away, though a couple of new bird species are beginning to trickle in. Red-winged blackbirds are here, but I’m almost hesitant to call them migrants, as they barely head south at all. They commonly winter in Maryland, so for them migration amounts to little more than a day trip.

The local Canada geese are either nesting already or just about to. I see them chasing interlopers from the pond they have chosen for breeding and honking wildly if another pair even so much as looks at “their” pond.

Spring may barely have only arrived, but here on the mountain, it’s already settling in.

No photo today--it's still too dark to take one.