Milder weather is a double-edged sword
March 31, 2007
Steve Grinley

     As the weather is turning a bit milder, some of the early spring migrants are making their first appearances. A few snowy and great egrets are showing up in area marshes. Ospreys are beginning to arrive and, hopefully, pairs will return to the osprey poles on Plum Island and in Salisbury. Woodcock are starting their spring ritual “dances” in the evenings. Phoebes are beginning to return to some their previous nesting sites. Wilson’s snipe and American pipits are showing up in Common Pastures in the fields off Scotland road in Newbury. It won’t be long before the first early warblers, the pine and the palm warbler, make it to our region.

     Most migrants come in on southwest winds, often thought of as the warm wind direction. But not all of us long for those warmer, spring days.

     I know I do, but Doug Chickering of Groveland shares with us another perspective on the varying weather that we have been having the past couple of weeks. He presented this argument just before the last snow storm: “Wouldn’t you know it. Just when the end of winter seemed right on the horizon; just when the daylight was seeping into what used to be night, and just as the blanket of snow in the backyard is retreating into the shadows at the edge of the woods, the bad weather returns. Snow again predicted for tonight. Is it going to be one to three inches? Or two to four? Or perhaps more? This is not knowable. What is known is that it is a little discouraging. When can we put away that snow shovel?

     “Yet in the face of an oncoming March storm I can’t help but think it might be worse. It might be a March blizzard. Or even worse it might be a March heat wave. Believe it or not the only thing that would depress my enthusiasm more than snow, would be temperatures in the upper 80s or 90s. And if a New England birder were to reflect upon this, it might not seem so preposterous. Early spring will pull the foliage out early. I have seen that before, and it’s effects are a great deal more annoying than pushing snow off the car.

     “In all actuality I am hoping for bad weather or, to be more accurate, I am hoping that April will be dreary, wet and cold. In Massachusetts that is what April should be. It keeps buds in the trees and the underbrush from bursting forth too early. When I am trying to pinpoint the location of a tantalizing call from a tree, I don’t want to be faced by an opaque wall of greenery. I can remember a day at Mount Auburn Cemetery approaching a cluster of birders surrounding a large, fully leafed maple tree. They informed that there was a Tennessee warbler somewhere therein, and they were trying to get a look. I then heard the unmistakable trill, and I too tried to peer into the impenetrate the dense cloak of green. I could see immediately that it was hopeless; that if I were lucky I might catch a glimpse of belly or undertail, or if I were extraordinarily lucky I might see it fly out and over the horizon.

     “Last year at Plum Island I had a Tennessee warbler 3 feet above my head in a bush just outside the rest rooms at Hellcat on Plum Island, and the year before I saw one at eye level just off the boardwalk also at Hellcat. In both cases the foliage had been retarded by a properly dismal spring. Plum Island always seems to be a week or so behind Mount Auburn in the progress of foliation. This can be useful. It is one of the reasons I have always been a little ambivalent about fighting traffic to get into Mount Auburn. It is true that there will be rarities unavailable anywhere else and their general bird list will be impressive. But it is also true that many of the birds I will be straining my neck to see at the crown of a nearly fully leafed out tree, I will be seeing a few days later on Plum Island, just above eye level among the new buds of a tree nearer to winter.

     “Therefore, when this storm is gone, I will be hoping for a slow arrival of spring, a spring that will reach its full bloom just as the warblers are coming in off the ocean.”

     I’m not sure I agree with you, Doug. I think I’d trade some foliage for a warmer April!

Steve Grinley
Bird Watcher’s Supply & Gift
Route 1 Traffic Circle
194 Route 1
Newburyport, MA 01950
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978-462-0775 
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