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Poor Will's Almanack: March 10 - 16, 2015

Julie Falk
/
Flickr Creative Commons

More and more things are happening, the plot of the story of March becoming more and more apparent as the month comes toward its climax.

Bright aconites and snowdrops and snow crocus have reached full bloom. Hyacinths and daffodils and tulips and pushkinia are inching up, sometimes budding, sometimes opening in the sun.

The robins mate in earnest before sunrise now. Bluebirds and killdeer and mockingbirds appear in the woods and fields. Cardinals and red-winged blackbirds have set their territories, defend them with song. Grackles explore the woods and shrubs, their firm clucks marking their pathways. Nuthatches court. Towhees court. Geese and ducks pair up along the waterways. Gold finches are half gold, will be full gold when the daffodils flower.

Flies hatch in the sun. Mosquitoes look for blood. Ants build their habitats in sidewalk cracks. Chipmunks venture out in the woodpiles and stone fences. Grass snakes bask in the first warm days.

Lilacs and raspberries, multiflora roses, privets and mock orange shrubs are leafing out, joining the precocious honeysukcles. Pollen forms on the pussy willows.

Toads and frogs emerge from their winter dens. Worms, pulled from their soil by the rains, get lost on driveways and roads.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back next week with notes for the fifth week of early spring, the first week of the Cabbage Butterfly Moon and the third week of the sun in Pisces. In the meantime, see how many of these signs you find. If you find just one, you know the others are happening, too.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.