Spring is Here at Last! Here's Proof!

Only last week I began to wonder if Spring would ever come.  Snow still lay deep everywhere, and every woodland trail was slick with ice.  Winter just dragged on and on.  But the change came suddenly.  The thermometer edged up rapidly in sequential days: 40s, 50s, 60s, and just yesterday it hit 75 degrees with a full sun beating back all that ice and snow.  Warm rain followed to finish the job. Nature had just been waiting, waiting, waiting, and now it was time:  Spring is here at last! 

The first to respond was our native Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), finally opening its tightly closed bulbous spathes to reveal the floret-studded, pollen-spilling spadices within, wafting its signature scent on the air to lure all early pollinators to enter and feast.

On the very first day I found my first blooming Skunk Cabbage, I also discovered thousands of these tiny white flowers carpeting a stretch of sandy low-nutrient soil along a shopping mall driveway.  And not only were these flowers already open wide, they were also advanced enough to start producing seeds!  This wee little waste-place weed called Whitlow Grass (Draba verna) sure doesn't waste any time getting going in Spring! It seems to emerge like magic: bare earth one day, teeming flowers the next!

Two days ago, an abandoned garden along a country road in Wilton was still deep in snow.  Today, this introduced garden flower called Snowdrops (Galanthus sp.) had sprung up as if overnight. By tomorrow, I bet those snowy-white buds will be spreading their petals wide.

In that same abandoned stone-walled garden, the first brave blooms of Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) were opening bright-yellow petals.  It won't take long before the whole plot will be carpeted with these showy little flowers.

And the birds are back, too!  Only a week ago, the cattail marshes along the Spring Run Trail in downtown Saratoga Springs were bereft of birdsong, except for the scolding calls of a Blue Jay or two.  But now, throngs of Red-winged Blackbird boys are back, challenging each other for choice nesting sites, filling the air with loud Conk-a-rees, and puffing out their bright-red shoulder markings to prove to their rivals how big and strong they are.

I confess that I, personally, did not see the Rusty Blackbirds in the forested wetlands that line the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail in Saratoga earlier this week. I did notice some black birds winging through the treetops, and I also could hear some distinctive rusty-garden-gate birdcalls filling the air.  But thankfully, my much-better-birder friend Sue Pierce was with me this day, and she could immediately identify that birdsong as belonging to this rare avian visitor.  I believe she was able to take a much better photo of a Rusty Blackbird than this one I took long ago and found in my photo files. My photo doesn't show the rusty cast to the bird's head, but it does show its distinguishing pale eye.

So there, Winter!  These sure signs of Spring prove it's time for you to go!