Still looking for evidence of Spring!

Well, I know … it was supposed to snow yesterday. I checked the weather, no snow until noon … yeah, well, in hindsight, but, then… who knew. I am still looking in all the most southerly exposed places … those with crags and outcroppings that not only promise but often deliver early sprouting. Hmmm … not so much.

Truly, there’s never a ‘bad’ day on the Giant, but no amount of peeking, peering, or perusing gave up signs of spring. Signs of life, yes:

• chickadees have an easy call to mimic, and I try to (‘typical song”) … and I pretend I’ve gotten them to answer back, though the truth is more likely that they just call as part of their ‘routine’. In finding the chickadee call online, I learned that males start to sing in mid-January and their calls increase as it gets warmer … females only occasionally sing.
• crows – if I were writing an alphabet post, it might read: a contingent of crows cavorting cacophonously across the sky
• ravens – “long live the Queen” – if she ever runs out of ravens at the Tower, she can find some at ours … actually on the Head of the Giant, but I get some poetic license! If you see them you might think crows or vultures – the raven's call is quite distinctive.
• vultures made lazy circles in the sky … where they found a thermal to ride, I cannot guess.
• a flock of robins ruffling up the rusty leaves, presumably searching for their lunch

I set out from Chestnut Lane along White. The ‘green’ I found were ‘puddles’ of mosses and lichen – identification eludes me, but I delight in the varying forms, textures, and colors, one often growing out or around the other … .

So much for my green ‘thrill’ … everything else was dry and brown – even the ferns are bedraggled this time of year. As I climbed Hezekiah’s Knob – who was Hezekiah anyway – and why does he have a ‘knob’? – I consider the columbine that will flourish on the slope in (one hopes) just a few weeks. In the past, in the thicket at the top of the knob, I’ve come upon Eastern Towhee, the males an arresting sight in their red, black, and white outfits … their calls are often whimsically quoted as “drink your te-eee-eee”. I’ve also seen them on the Blue Trail along the 3rd ridge, during nesting time they can scold most insistently. Yesterday, no joy. These are one of the few birds I can identify by their call … the Prairie Warbler is another, whose distinctive call makes it easy. There was nary a sign of his bright yellow form either.

Down the backside of the Knob and on towards Orange – although I had found no signs of spring growth, I was somewhat nonplussed to find one slope still in the grips of winter; covered in ice trodden snow turned to ice - not my choice of a path under these conditions.

Here I turned onto Orange to skirt the vernal pool that, around this time of year, usually resonates with the calls of the wood frog (scroll down the linked page for the full chorus). Wood frogs are amazing! They actually freeze ‘solid’ the minute they touch ice and stay that way, sometimes for days. Check out this video clip for the full story. Yesterday, the pool was still rimmed with ice … pretty, but not conducive to frog thawing.

I almost stepped on, and obliterated, the only sprouting thing I came across…a barely auspicious suggestion of things to come. As this website alludes, the emerging Skunk Cabbage does look a bit like A Little Shop of Horrors. What was interesting about the aforementioned site is the chart towards the end of the page indicating what organisms rely on the Skunk Cabbage for food and/or shelter. We are all connected!

Heading up the Dickerman Carriage Path off the Red Circle, the winter runoff chuckled its way down the slope to flood the trail below. Passing through the pine grove near the top of the ridge, I came across evidence of ‘drama’. Several strikingly patterned feathers littered the path …I’d imagine an ‘air strike’ since there was no body … but there were downy tufts as well as the feathers, so somebody got ‘what for’ in the not so distant past.

Once I reached the White trail, I poked about the pavilion/cabin locations, entertaining my fancy as to life in the 1890′s, when folks ‘summered’ on the Giant. Just enough remains, if you know where to look, to tickle the imagination. By then I’d been out three hours, so with few pauses, I hooked up with the Yellow-Green x-over to meet Yellow and on back to the car. It’s never a ‘bad’ day on the Giant. I’m hoping that with temps approaching 50 degrees today, a hike later this afternoon will bring me some spring!