Spring is Beginning to Show on the Trails

Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay
March 13, 2008

It is cold today, especially on the marsh front, so I keep on moving.  In March
on Cape Cod the wind off the Bay is chilling.  I scare up my first chipmunk of
the new season, almost from underfoot.  Quickly reaching the end of Fresh Brook
Pathway and turning back, I pause at the beach.  It is low tide.  Fresh Brook
winds snakelike through the marsh -- brown on brown.

Headed back, I pass onto Bay View Trail.  Several years ago several dolphins
were stranded at this spot.  I remember watching Staff Naturalist Dennis Murley
down in the mud struggling to keep one of the group alive.  It died in his arms.

A solitary Red-Breasted Merganser cruises Silver Spring Pond, as a Kingfisher
skims the surface.  A thin coat of ice from last night's high tide drapes like
tissue paper over the detritus of the passing year's marsh grass.  Proceeding
toward the beach, I draw in deeply of the clean, fresh sea smell, particularly
pungent this morning.  A Red-Tailed Hawk -- and then another -- circles
overhead, catching wind currents.  They disappear from my sight into the sun.

Back at Home Base there are perhaps forty Red-Winged Blackbirds at the feeders,
showing brilliant red epaulets.

                                                 Marlene Denessen
                                                 Volunteer Naturalist