The middle of May is, in the part of the country I live in, the rough midpoint of the year by feel if not by calendar. Spring is fully in. The leaves have come out. The migrants are mostly through. The summer birds are settling onto their territories. There is a stretch of about two weeks in May when the yard contains more bird life than at any other time of the calendar, and the noise of it at first light is louder than it will be again until the same week next year.

I have started keeping a small almanac entry at this point in the calendar, partly because so much is happening that it would otherwise blur. The notes are not comprehensive. They are markers, the kind of dated stake I can drive into the ground of the year to know where I am the next time I come back to this point.

A Small Almanac Entry for Mid-May

The dogwood bloomed on May 8. The lilac came out on May 11. The first hummingbird, as I wrote last week, was the evening of May 10. The first chimney swift overhead was May 12, which is later than usual but probably reflects cool weather rather than any larger issue. Swifts are a species I miss for most of the year and then forget I was missing until the first chittering pass over the rooftop in early summer reminds me. The first scarlet tanager from the woodlot across the road, May 13. The first wood thrush, also May 13. The wrens on the hose reel had laid five eggs by May 11.

Halfway through the year, by the feel of things, the running list of arrivals and milestones is comfortable to look at. The yard has been doing what it should do. The dates are within a few days of the long-term average. Nothing has been catastrophically off, which is the kind of report I have come to value because some years it is not the case. Last year the dogwood bloomed nearly two weeks late after a cold April. The year before that, the hummingbirds did not arrive until past mid-month. The annual variance is real, and a year that runs close to the long-term average is itself a small kind of news.

A Year Running Close to Average

I think about midway points in the year more than I used to. The traditional markers are the equinoxes and the solstices, which divide the year into quarters. Those are useful. But there are softer midpoints, the ones that fall in the middle of each quarter, and the middle of May is one of them. It is roughly halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and the yard at this point is also halfway between bare-branch and full-canopy, halfway between empty and busy, halfway between the quiet of March and the dense activity of late June.

The next milestone I will look for is the first chick out of any of the nests I am tracking. The chickadees were already feeding nestlings as of last weekend, which means the first fledglings should be out sometime in the next ten days. The wrens will not have young until June. The bluebirds, if they have settled, should be incubating now and feeding young by the end of the month. Spring at this point becomes early summer in the bird community, and the calendar will start being measured in nesting cycles rather than in arrivals.

From Spring Arrivals to Nesting Cycles

A Few Specific Dates From This Year

What I find most satisfying about keeping notes at the midpoint is the rear-view. By the time I write this entry I have already had March, April, and the first half of May to look back on, and I can see the pattern of the year as it has been so far. The shape is clear enough now to be useful. The second half of the calendar will reveal itself, but the first half has a form, and the form is recognizable from previous years, and that is a comforting thing to be able to say in the middle of May.

The arrivals so far this spring have been steady, and the steady is what I have come to look for at this point in the year, when the year is half spent and the second half is still entirely available.