March Wind

This immature peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) with feathers ruffled by the wind reminds me that I am cold, ruffled by wind, and increasingly impatient for warmer weather. We are in that time Charles Dickens described in Great Expectation as "those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade." Click to enlarge. 

Equinox Eve

Tonight is the last night of winter! Doubtless these two raccoons I saw sitting in a tree last week looking down on snow-covered Central Park in New York City, will welcome the warmer season. Here's my favorite welcome spring poem. Click to enlarge.

When the Hounds of Spring

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover, 

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remember'd is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 

And in the green underwood and over 

          Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Almost Spring

This is how it was around here last week -- all insects in crocus blossoms and the tossing off of overcoats. Click to enlarge. 

The birds were singing and making plans. This robin looks particularly ready and eager. 

But instead of more of this...

This again!
On Tuesday Philadelphia and New York City are expecting as much as a foot of snow, and possibly more. This calls for a poem. 

While yet we wait for spring, And from the dry 

by Robert Seymour Bridges

While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry

And blackening east that so embitters March,

Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,

And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;

Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky

The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,

And where the coverts hazels interarch

Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie.

Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid

A million buds but stay their blossoming;

And trustful birds have built their nests amid

The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing 

Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,

And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring. 

Nest Shopping

Nesting season has begun in New York City. This picture of a pair of European house sparrows, Passer domesticus, shows off the adaptability that helps theses birds live among humans so successfully. They'll make nests in natural cavities like holes in tree trunks, but also will readily move into man-made spaces like the hollow pipe the female on the right is sitting inside. The pipe holds cables that suspend a traffic light over Broadway in Manhattan. All over the city, males like the one on the left are defending traffic light cavities just like this one, and fights among males often break out around the streetlights in early spring. Females sparrows visit while the male nest-owner chirps and hops nearby, hoping a female will move in. This female looks pretty comfortable and might be thinking of how to decorate the interior with grass and fluff to make it a perfect dream nest. Looks like a match has been made. Click to enlarge. 

Meanwhile, in Central Park, this European starling, Sterna vulgaris,  has found a very nice natural cavity. Before long all the nest-worthy spots in the city will be full of cheeping nestlings.