The Bluebird Box, Year Two
The bluebird box has been on the back fence for two years now, and last spring a pair finally used it. The story of how that happened is the story of how nest boxes work in general, which is that they often do not,...
Author: abirdsworld_p59zse
Spring Cleaning Without Spring Cleaning
Spring cleaning, as my grandmother understood it, was a real thing with a real timeline. Windows came off their frames and got washed inside and out. Rugs went over the line in the back yard and got beaten with a broom. Curtains came down...
March’s Two Faces
March in the upper latitudes has two faces and it shows them both every year, sometimes in the same week. Early March is still winter. Late March is something else, not quite spring, but not winter anymore in any honest accounting. The shift happens...
First Robin, and What Time It Came
The first robin of the year on the actual lawn arrived at 6:42 in the morning on Tuesday. I am being specific because I had been waiting for it, and the time matters less than the date but I will record both. Robins are...
A Weekend at a Desert Edge Hotel
The desert edge of Las Vegas, half an hour out from the strip, is one of the better birding destinations in the western United States, and most of the people who fly into the city never see any of it. I have made this...
Why I Stopped Cleaning the Yard in March
I stopped cleaning the yard in March about four years ago. I do not mean I stopped pulling weeds or mowing the grass once it started growing. I mean I stopped the early spring rake-out, the one where you cut back the perennials, clear...
The First Long Light
The first long evening of the year happened on a Tuesday at the end of February. I noticed it because I was washing dishes after dinner and the light over the sink was still natural light, not artificial, which it had not been for...
Bird Song at 5:47 AM
The first song sparrow of the year sang at 5:47 in the morning on a Thursday in late February. I noted the time because I had been awake for nearly an hour, sitting by the open kitchen window with coffee, and the morning had...
Driving Out to Where the Cranes Land
The sandhill cranes stage in the Platte River valley of central Nebraska every spring, and the staging is one of the great natural events of North America. Around half a million birds funnel through a stretch of river roughly eighty miles long, between late...
When the Cardinal Returned to His Branch
The cardinal returned to his branch this week. I should be careful with that sentence, because cardinals do not really go away. The male in our yard has been here all winter, working the feeder, sleeping somewhere in the hedge, calling intermittently. What I...