It’s unmistakeably spring here. I went for a walk this afternoon to enjoy the sunshine and relative warmth. When it’s been consistently either below freezing or incredibly windy or both, a still 45o day is a thing of wonder.
It seems the birds think so too. They’re everywhere, singing and courting and claiming the best nesting territory. Killdeer, redwing blackbirds, robins, woodpeckers, finches, sbcbs (small brown chirpy birds) and flying jewels, hawks with great wingspans and tiny creatures so light they don’t bend the grass-stems when they alight. I got to see a pair of male redwing blackbirds chasing each other all over the sky, one flying away at top speed, then evidently thinking better of it and turning on his tailfeathers to chase his erstwhile pursuer with equal determination. Through the whole performance the female sat on the wire, chirping and flirting her tail, encouraging them to their best display. The guys were still chasing each other when a third boy flew over and introduced himself, whereupon she flew away with the one who wasn’t busy chasing his rival. The robins enacted the same little play, save that instead of chasing each other the fellows flew at each other, bumping in mid-air, fluttering down for a brief landing and then doing it again. And sure enough, once the Robin Wrestling Team fluttered five feet away from the watching lady, another glossy young man flew down from the barn roof to escort her off to a nearby sapling. If the current barn-cat (a feral calico, near as I can tell) isn’t with kittens yet, she certainly will be shortly, and the nanny-goat the neighbors around the corner have looks like she might be carrying twin kids, she’s so round.
So it’s definitely spring. I’ll be potting up some herbs to go out on the back steps in a couple of weeks here, and hopefully walking more as the weather gets warmer. I’ve even got new walking shoes.