Early Arrival

Our mid-meadow brown thrasher on his first day back in 2006.

While doing a radio interview this morning on the phone in the tower room, Julie spotted a shockingly early spring returnee: a brown thrasher (!) was scratching around in the detritus under the bird feeders. She said it was painful being on the radio and not being able to shout the sighting down the stairs to me! This is at least a week early--maybe two--for this bird to have returned here to our ridge-top farm. Of course it could just be a migrant. I'm assuming it's a male heading back north early to claim his territory. Welcome dude! Hope you hang around!

We're not worried for Mr. Thrasher's safety since we have plenty of sumacs, dogwoods, and other fruit-bearing trees/shrubs still retaining some of their offerings. And we'll put extra suet dough out, scatter some cracked corn and mixed seed under the brambles where thrashers love to thrash. I only wish the weather were better—it's 40 degrees and raining hard.

We've had a few other signs of spring this week. Peepers are calling as are mountain chorus frogs. The woodcock seems to be in mid-season form with no delays between song flights. Meadowlarks, kestrels, killdeer, and skeins of Canada geese are overhead each day. The tree buds are swelling regardless of species. Crocuses and daffodils are strutting their stuff. The lawn and meadow are beginning to look more green than brown. All the resident birds are singing and all the woodpeckers are playing percussion, beating out their love tattoos on hollow trees. The mourning doves are doing their stiff-winged courtship flights where they briefly look exactly like an accipiter, causing birders everywhere to make bad ID calls.

So spring is arriving, even though it still feels like late winter out there.