Anticipating Spring

It would be hard to recognize this vernal pool, especially in winter,without knowing it's by this bench which has an apt quotation from my favorite Nature writer, Aldo Leopold:  "Rest cries the sawyer, and we pause for breath."  (Photo by Don Comis)

My first two black vultures of the season, resting by a deer carcass (not in photo).  (Photo by Don Comis)

I just had to write this early today since I am so exhilarated from an outing this morning at Kenyon College.  It's March 7 and I finally started toward my goal of visiting a vernal pool daily in March at the Brown Family Environmental Center.

Boy did it pay off--although it's too early yet to see spotted salamanders and other amphibians marching to the pool.  Even as I drove on Rt. 308 toward Gambier, I saw a huge flock of large birds I thought were wild turkeys grazing in corn stubble, near New Gambier Road.  This is probably the same field where someone saw a snowy owl on February 1.

I should have stopped but didn't.  When I got to the parking area by the Miller Observatory, I was confronted by a territorial mockingbird.

On the way to the pool, I have the privilege of passing a corridor of bluebird and tree swallow birdhouses.  I saw five bluebirds, with one couple checking out a home.  A mockingbird, possibly the one who warned me or just another bossy mockingbird, chased a bluebird.

I heard and saw many birds and tracks, including possible coyote tracks.

On my way home, I even saw my first song sparrow singing from the top of a crabapple tree on a lawn in my neighborhood.