March 20 - Spring is here, believe it

There are two well-known signs that spring has officially arrived in Marshfield. Dairy Queen on Webster Street opens and fish crows return to Center Marshfield from their southern sojourn. To date, neither has occurred. In fact, it's been snowing in these last few days of winter, making it feel like spring will never arrive.

But spring is here, and I have proof.

About a week ago I was in Hull for a meeting, and had a little time to kill. I also had a telescope, so I thought I'd check out the osprey platform on the Weir River estuary, underneath the Hull Wind II turbine. Ospreys are actually due back from the south later this month, but one had already been reported in the Westport area, so I thought I'd take a chance. No luck. But, as I turned to leave, I looked beside me and saw pussy willows starting to open up their buds, as seen in the pic to the left.

That was actually sign number two. A few days earlier, while on our Friday Morning Bird Walk, we stopped at the Duxbury Bogs Conservation Area and espied a long lost sight, painted turtles climbing out of the mud and up onto a log. They've begun emerging from their winter rest and are returning to the surface to start soaking in the sun (aren't we all). That's a true sign that the seasons are a-changing.

Finally, a few days ago, I visited North Hill Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Duxbury to conduct another installment of our ongoing waterfowl survey on the pond. The expected suspects were there, 81 Canada geese, 2 mute swans, a handful of ring-necked ducks and a few common mergansers. The highlight, though, was a line of four wood ducks swimming along among the dead cedar trees in the distance. Wood ducks are known to not like having "cold feet," and as such are only around when they feel the temps are right, or are going to be very soon.

Other wildlife continues to show up on our doorstep, winter residents changing their behavior for spring. One of our resident wild turkeys from the past few years (they've been hanging around the North River Wildlife Sanctuary parking lot off and on since November 1, 2005) gave me a great photo op this week, going into full "I'm a bad dude" mode as I walked outside the front door. It's almost that time of year when the male flocks and female flocks break up and the sexes begin to intermingle. As such, Darryl, here, needs to practice the things that attract female turkeys, puffing himself out and acting belligerently. It's quite a sight from a few feet away.

Yesterday I had the chance to speak at the Mass Audubon staff natural history conference at the Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick, on the topic of "21 Years of Friday Morning Birding," a statistical study of more than 47,000 check marks made on field cards on the South Shore since 1987. As I walked out the door at the end of the day, I ran into this red-tailed hawk sitting on a tree swallow box. Red-tails, as they're known colloquially, are already nesting, well in advance of many other bird species around the state.

So, yes, spring is on its way to the South Shore, despite what the snow says. Monday I'm off to the North Shore for a day's birding and then it's Nantucket for three days soon thereafter. When I'm back, it'll be time to start working on the second season of the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 2 project, a major citizen science undertaking of Mass Audubon.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, I'll find life bird number 303.