Skunk Cabbage

I glanced out the window today, enjoying the view of no snow on the banks of the stream (though it's snowing pretty hard right now, so perhaps that will change by tomorrow), and noticed a small, dark reddish shape. A skunk cabbage blossom-- one of my favorite signs of spring! I grabbed my sketchbook and headed out in the rain, that promptly began mixing with snow, and quickly sketched a few blossoms.

The flower, made up of a spathe (large bract that forms a sheath) that surrounds a spadix (a spike-like fleshy stem that has small flowers along its length) comes up early in the spring, often while there's still snow on the ground. It produces heat (up to 35 degrees above air temp) and melts its way through the frozen earth and melts the snow around it. I guess that means I can expect to see reddish or yellowish greenish flowers protruding through the snow tomorrow morning, reminding me that spring is here in one of its earliest forms.

Click on the image to see it large enough to read.

Vernal Equinox

Friday was the first day of spring, though with snow on the ground and new snow falling, it looked more like winter. Not even snowdrops, the first of the bulbs to poke through the ground here, are up yet, but the birds are singing their glorious songs of spring and every day the sun shines a bit longer.

I noticed that we didn't have exactly twelve hours each of day and night on Friday; day was slightly longer. It turns out that that's because sunrise is counted as the time the top of the sun's disc first appears on the horizon, whereas sunset is when the trailing edge of the sun disappears below the horizon. That makes "day" slightly longer. In addition, the earth's atmosphere causes refraction of light, which makes the sun visible to us before it actually rises and for a short time after it actually sets. Here's a link I found that explained all that clearly and simply:
Equinox: equal day and night, but not quite

Red-winged Blackbird

This morning I was reading inside with the outdoor speakers on (we have microphones on the deck near the bird feeders), when I suddenly heard conk-la-ree! The song of the Red-winged Blackbird! I leaped up and ran out to the deck, and counted nine male Red-wings in a treetop! A minute later there were twenty, divided between two trees and, as I watched, some were flying from the more southerly tree to the one on the north side of our yard. A couple of minutes later all were gone, perhaps to proclaim the coming of spring to someone farther north.

Red-winged Blackbird

Pine Siskin

In the winter the Goldfinches mob our feeders, devouring nyjer seeds and sunflower hearts, often outnumbering all the other birds on the deck. Sometimes when we look out, we see birds that look like Goldfinches but not quite. When I look more closely I see streaks where Goldfinches have clear breasts and backs, and I see a hint of bright yellow in the wings. Pine Siskins-- closely related to Goldfinches but only here in winter, and not every winter at that.

Click on the photo to see it large enough to read more information.

Pine Siskin