Phoebes are back, often choosing nest spots where they will be disturbed, causing everyone to stop using the front (or back) door for a few weeks / Trees in flower: quaking aspen, big toothed aspen, cottonwood, red maple, silver maple, American elm, speckled alder, beaked hazelnut, and the willows / Winter wrens are early risers. Their high-spirited song is one of the longest and most complex bird songs known / Canada and snow geese are passing overhead

Needles of roadside white pines have now turned brown if they have been exposed to too much road salt / Chickadees are losing interest in the bird feeder. Bears may soon have increasing interest / The white flowers of bloodroot are out before the leaves. The origin of its name will be clear if you scratch the root / Gray fox are giving birth, in hollow logs or trees, or in a burrow in a bank / Willow pollen is the first spring food for many species of bees

April 21-22: the Lyrid meteor shower may include luminous dust trails that can be seen for several seconds / Wood turtles emerge from streams. They stay near streams at first but will gradually expand their foraging area over the next couple of weeks / The yellow-bellied sapsucker signals his return with drumming that slows and is erratic at the end / Mourning cloak butterflies are flitting through sunny areas. They’ve overwintered as adults

Queen bumblebees fly in a zigzag course close to the ground, searching for mouse holes. The queen will begin a new colony in an abandoned mouse nest / Tom turkeys sometimes start gobbling from their roosts before dawn. They will keep gobbling for much of the morning / There are many sparrow species here now: field, chipping, song, tree, white-throated, and fox, to name but a few / Moose hair is in raggedy patches, for they are molting their thick winter coats