In the Northeast USA, spring 2009 has been slow in coming with long weeks of low daytime temperatures and many nights of bone chilling cold. Hopes for an early spring went unfulfilled as white flakes whirled down in eastern Connecticut for the second time during the first windy, wintry eight days of March. In the last few years, March has come in like a lamb and gone out like a lion. The Northeast is hoping that 2009 reverses the process, putting this month's weather pattern back in the expected sequence.
Mammalian Spring Behaviors
Gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) have been clipping flower buds from the silver maples (Acer saccharinum) and dropping them to the ground. The sap is flowing in some maples because the squirrels are clipping twigs and buds to lick the sap oozing from these cuts. they will continue to do so until early April.
Chipmunks (Tamias striatus) begin scampering across back yards and stone walls. They can be expected to attack spring bulbs as their leaves and flower buds begin to show.
Striped skunks (Mephistes mephistes) are wandering the roads in search of mates and food, some being struck by cars.
Spring Activities of Birds
Last year's young mute swans (Cygnus olor) are swimming alone now. Their parents have other business to tend to. Male mallards (Anser platyrhynchos) chase other males several yards from their mates.
Red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) have been flying along fence lines and dropping to the lawn to pull earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) from the grass much as a robin would.
Canada geese (Branta canadensis) are swimming in pairs instead of in flocks of thirty and more. They will be nesting soon.
Male red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator) are performing their bow-grunt-draw back and whistle-extend mating displays to females. This will continue until these birds have migrated to the northern lakes and completed building their nests.
Most buffleheads (Bucephala albeola) are swimming in pairs instead of flocks. It looks like they will also be flying north soon.
Downy woodpeckers (Picoides pubescens) have begun to rat-a-tat-tat on tree limbs to announce their territories and attract mates. Mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) pairs are bobbing and cooing. On sunny days - even with near freezing temperatures - male red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) are sitting in trees and tall grasses singing their “conk-a-rees” and waiting for the females to arrive.
Ring-billed (Larus delawarensis) and herring gulls (Larus argentatus) have put on their red eye liner feathers in preparation for courtship. The herring gulls have also developed the red patch just behind the tip of their lower bills.
Amphibians Moving in Spring
On March's unpleasantly cold, windy, and rainy nights female wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) and spring peepers (Hyla crucifer) hop across wooded roadways toward ponds. Male wood frogs are already at the ponds calling their females to mate, and the peepers are getting ready to sing. Frogs and spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculata) will continue to be on the roads during rainy nights through March and into April.
Spring Invertebrates
Fresh worm castings are appearing in yards and forest glades. There is a lot of subterranean activity. American robins (Turdus migratorius) and European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) will be feasting on them very soon.
Moths fly on nights where the temperatures are above forty degrees Fahrenheit, and Mourning Cloak butterflies (Nymphalis antiopa) flit through wooded glades on sunny days.
Ants move up silver maple trees following the squirrels to drink sap that oozes from nipped off twigs and buds.
Plant Signs of Spring
The flower buds of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and spicebush (Lonicera benzoin) are noticeably rounding up and swollen. They may shrink when cold nights return, but their cells are dividing in preparation for blooming.
Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) flower spikes have broken through the soil. Crocus (Crocus vernus) and snowdrops (Galanthus species) are flowering. Daffodil (Narcissus sp.) and grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) leaves are above the gound while their flower buds stay below the surface in early March.
Lake and Pond Activity
All the ice on sunlit southern ponds is melted, but shaded, woodland vernal pools have only the edges of the ice gone – just enough to let the frogs and salamanders slip in to breed.
Spring is Not Quite Here
Although many signs indicate spring has begun, the clear indicators of spring, such as flowers and greening of plants, have barely begun to show. Ospreys (Pandion haliatus), warblers (Dendroica species), and sandpipers (Charadris species) have not returned from their southern winter grounds. Horned grebes (Podiceps auritus) and common loons (Gavia immer) are still in winter plumage and have not left the bays and estuaries of southeastern Connecticut. Though they do not change out of breeding plumage in the northeast, buffleheads, brant geese (Branta bernicula), hooded (Mergus cucullatus), and red-breasted mergansers, have not flown north yet.
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