Crazy April Weather!

The past two days have seen a bout of our typical but crazy April weather. I thought we were ready to start working in the garden, and had the first tasks underway, but then the temperature plunged and we were back into winter. Light blowing snow arrived Saturday night, and continued on and off all day Sunday, interspersed with periods of rain and sun. There's still snow forecast for later today.

It's only a thin white covering on the ground, which is rapidly disappearing in the sun, but April snow always arrives like a blustery surprise, and Sunday it was blowing horizontally more than not. Reminded me of one day in a boat off the west coast of Scotland some years ago!

2nd Wave of Migrant Birds and First Frogs

A few warm days, and the snow is pretty well gone. It's mid-April, and the second wave of migrant birds is arriving back. While robins, red-wings and turkey vultures have been here for a month, now a new group of common summer birds is showing up, their calls adding to the variety of music in the air.

The song sparrows have just been back a week. They sit at the very top of younger spruce trees and call their distinctive, easily recognized song. Little brown birds, like all the sparrows, they have a dark brown spot on their breast that makes them immediately recognizable, along with their song.

Yesterday I saw a pair of chipping sparrows too. Even tinier 'little brown birds', these sparrows are one of the most common in residential yards, their call a clear trill that you will hear all summer long. These sparrows have a plain breast, and a small reddish-brown cap on their head, and are frequently heard squeaking from the ditch as they hunt for food.

A flicker has been calling it's long staccato series of notes, like a woodpecker that can't stop. I haven't seen it yet, but the call is clearly distinctive.

Finally, our favourite spring migrant arrived back yesterday, the bluebird. Calling from high in the ash tree, it sat in the sun and waited while I found the binoculars to identify it for sure. From underneath you just see the white and reddish breast, but seen from behind the flash of blue is clear. We hope it stays around and nests nearby.

And our favourite sounds of spring - the spring peepers and now the wood frogs are calling madly from a hidden pond across the road. They seem to start on the day the last of the ice is melting, and the song gets stronger by the day, filling the evening and night with frog music.

Spring is Finally Here

Well, I think spring is finally here. At the moment there's actually a thunderstorm passing overhead, it's pouring rain, and whatever snow is left is quickly being washed away. The air is now so humid that fog is washing in, cloaking the trees in a ghostly blanket of greyish-white. The temperature is supposed to soar to 20 degrees by 4 o'clock.

Turkey vultures as we usually see them.

Meanwhile, the early birds have been active. Turkey vultures are almost always visible soaring overhead, and with warmer tempertures will come the thermals that let them rise to be just a black dot in the sky. The other day though, they were swooping low over the yard, and landing to dine off some unfortunate road-kill.

Swooping in to the roadkill.

Since the temperatures rose, the robins are everywhere, running across the ground searching for worms, and the mourning doves are starting their nest under the eaves. The male red-wings are still in a small flock, but will soon disperse to claim their nesting territory too. Goldfinch are turning bright yellow, and there is still a small flock of redpolls, a sparrow-like bird with a red patch on top of its head, staying nearby. They will leave for the boreal forest soon.

Goldfinch and redpoll on the feeder.

Spring run-off has been slow this year, bursting down the streams during the warm speall in mid-March, but then freezing in place again as temperatures dropped. Only now, nearly a month later, will we see another burst of spring flow in the creeks and river.

Male redwings in the top of a poplar.

The Seasons are Stalled!

Ten days ago, it seemed like spring had arrived. Temperatures soared, it was actually warm outside, and the snow started melting fast. The first wave of spring migrants arrived back, with robins, red-wing blackbirds, grackles, and a turkey vulture all suddenly showing up in the space of 3 days. Further south, we saw a flock of tundra swans in a field, resting and feeding on their way north (see 3 pix). Canada geese are showing up in pairs, sitting on still-frozen ponds, hoping for spring.


But then winter returned with a snowstorm that changed the world to white again, and the spring birds have gone back into hiding. And the weather is just staying cold, well below zero at night, and barely up to the freezing mark during the day, in spite of bright sunny skies. The snow is not melting, just slowly evaporating, straight into the air.


But some things do tolerate late winter weather. In the swamp, skunk cabbage have started to poke their lime-green sheeth of leaves above the snow, generating a small oven of warmth within their leaves that may be 20 degrees higher than the surrounding air, to protect this, the earliest of the spring flowers.


And we still see the deer. The other evening we looked out the window to see 6 of them grazing quietly on our lawn (where we had mixed in lots of clover with the grass seed), not 20 feet from the house. And the small flock of male red-wing blackbirds (the males return first; the females when it's warmer) was sitting in a tree this morning, looking like they were shivering in the cold.

North for March Break

Earlier this week we enjoyed a few wonderful last winter days at a cottage near Algonquin Park, where you need to snowshoe the last short distance from the road. Glorious sunny days, snowshoing in the woods, and skiing on the lake. Watched a few birds and a red squirrel visiting the feeder while we were there.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Blue Jay

Downy Woodpecker

Chickadee

Red Squirrel

Winter Comes; Winter Goes

It's March, and winter is coming and going as it pleases. Temperature rises, rain arrives and the snow melts; temperature falls, it snows again and the world turns back to white. It's wet snow, so it sticks to every twig and turns the woods into a fantasy. But when the rain arrives, the driveway turns to ice. And in between is a sunny day with heavy hoarfrost in the morning, as in these pictures.

Meanwhile, spring gets ever closer. The days are much longer, and the sun, higher in the sky, is warm when you're walking. I heard a report of merganzers on a local pond yesterday, and today is the traditional day when I always watched for the robins arriving back - though we've moved a little further north now, so I may have to wait a few days.


At least here the snow stays white and we don't suffer the ugly brown snowbanks, much and slush along the roads. The hope here is that snow will stay around long enough to allow skiing over March Break. With rain today and tomorrow it's going to be touch and go this year.



Unfortunately the good snow-shoeing and cross-country skiing seems to have ended for the year, though we may get a day or two more if we get a big snowstorm. You need to make good use of the real winter in January and February to get your share of beautiful days outdoors.

More Winter Shadows