A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
April
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
↑ top
These listing are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on you latitude, elevation - and the weather.
-----
© 2007 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
