I know what you’re probably thinking; since robins stay here all winter now they aren’t really a sign of spring anymore. I’d agree with you up to a point but this photo is here because I saw this bird yanking earthworms out of this lawn and that means the soil has thawed out, and that certainly is a sign of spring. Unfortunately getting a photo of him yanking earthworms out of the ground wasn’t going to happen. He was too quick for me.
The female flowers of American hazelnut (Corylus Americana) have opened even though there is still snow on the ground. It could be because the temperature finally shot up to 70 degrees, but whatever caused it they’ve opened before the male catkins. It might be that the female flower’s opening signals the male flowers that it’s time to open. I’ve never paid close enough attention to know for sure. I looked back at last year’s blog photos and found that I first saw these flowers on exactly the same day in 2014, so apparently the severity of winter doesn’t affect their bloom time.
Female hazelnuts are among the smallest flowers that I know of. I understand that not everyone who reads this blog has seen a female hazel flower though, so this year I clipped a standard 1 inch paperclip to the branch to give you an idea of just how small these tiny beauties really are. You have to look very carefully to find them; I can just barely see them by eye.
I was surprised to find the female hazelnut flowers open when the male flowers, shown here, hadn’t even started shedding pollen yet, but maybe this is the way it happens every year. I’ve got to pay a little closer attention.
Female red maple flowers (Acer rubrum) look a lot like female American hazelnut flowers, but they are much bigger and easier to see, thankfully. The female flowers mostly wait for the wind to blow some pollen their way, but bees occasionally visit them too. Female flowers usually happen in clusters with each flower having 5 sepals, 5 petals, and 2 styles. Once pollinated they quickly become pairs of bright red, slightly hairy samaras. I’ve read that you can find yellow or orange samaras, but I’ve only seen red.
Each male flower is about 1/8″ long with 5 sepals, and 5 petals like the female flower, but instead of styles has several stamens. The sepals and petals are usually red and difficult to tell apart. Anyone who understands flower parts should easily recognize the male red maple flower because of its stamens, which resemble the stamens of other flowers like lilies, daylilies, tradescantia and many others.
Each year I try to get a photo of a red maple tree flowering and usually don’t have any luck but this year the sun was in just the right spot to illuminate the flowers. There are many thousands of flowers on a single tree. This means that maple sugaring season has ended. Once the flower buds open the sap becomes bitter.
I’m starting to see more and more crocus blossoms. The daffodils should bloom soon. They are budded now but not showing any color yet.
This blossom had what I think was a honey bee in it. Its pollen sacs were bulging but it was rolling all around inside the flower as if it had reached bee nirvana and was in an ecstatic frenzy.
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not. ~Georgia O’Keeffe
The scilla (Scilla siberica) I planted a few years ago are showing some color. They are also starting to multiply a bit, I’m happy to see. As soon as I raked the winter’s fallen oak leaves off them every squirrel in the neighborhood started digging in the newly uncovered soil. At first I thought they were digging up the scilla bulbs, but they were just digging up the acorns they had buried last fall.
In the book Suburban Safari; a Year On The Lawn, author Hannah Holmes tells how scientists have found that squirrels eat white oak acorns immediately and bury red oak acorns to eat the following year. That’s because the squirrels somehow know that white oak acorns germinate in the same autumn that they fall from the tree and red oak acorns don’t germinate until the following year. The red oak acorns are good for storing but the white oak acorns aren’t, so the next time you see a squirrel burying an acorn it’s a safe bet that it’s from a red oak.
It’s great to see water instead of ice and snow in the woods.
We had some rain last week and the soil is saturated so the water really can’t seep into the ground. Instead it runs downhill.
The snow was plowed off this pond all winter to make a place to skate and you can see how the darker plowed ice is melting faster than that which wasn’t plowed, over on the right. It’s a good lesson in how darker things absorb more heat from the sun. I always have to smile when I hear people complain about the dirty snowbanks in spring. They don’t seem to realize that they melt a lot faster than the clean ones.
Over the years many plow trucks have broken through this ice and ended up on the bottom of the pond. Luckily it wasn’t ever deep enough to harm the driver, but the trucks needed an overhaul and the driver a cup of good hot coffee.
The banks of the Ashuelot River in Swanzey are almost snow free, but on this day you could still see some way down at the far end where it makes a turn. There is still plenty in the woods, too.
Canada geese have returned to the river and are still staying just out of comfortable camera range.
There is enough melt and rainwater flowing into the Ashuelot River to make some nice big waves again. I like to watch them but I also like trying to get photos of them. When you watch you can tune in to the rhythm of the river but only in a photo can you see all the color, movement and beauty that you missed when everything was happening so quickly.
It’s spring fever, that’s what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain
Thanks for coming by.
Very nice post, Allen…it’s hard to imagine a snow-plow driving across one of your ponds, but I guess it really does get that cold up there, doesn’t it? It’s beyond my experience. 🙂
Yes, it gets plenty cold enough to drive many vehicles on the ice and ice fisherman do it all the time. A foot and a half of ice can support a lot of weight.
I guess my mind is balking at the foot and a half of ice!! I can conceptualize it, but have never seen/known it personally. 🙂
It’s interesting to see pictures of them cutting blocks of ice from the lakes and ponds when we had ice houses instead of refrigeration. It gets pretty thick!
I’ve seen pictures and read about that being done, but just never saw it for myself. And yes, very interesting. 🙂
Round and round we go
And where we stop no body knows
The changing of the seasons seems to happen faster each year!
You too then. 🙂
It’s good to see the flowers finally blooming there. I can’t imagine a pond freezing so much a snow plough could drive across. In fact I’ve never seen a snowplough for real.
Yes, it’s nice to see spring finally here.
They drive on and plow ice all the time here, but they don’t always check its thickness first!
I appreciated seeing all the flowers and especially the bee ecstatically rolling in the pollen.
I’m glad that you did, Emily. That was one happy bee!
I am so pleased that Spring has arrived where you are! I planted some Scillas a few years ago too. I have also found that they are spreading and that squirrels and voles don’t like them. I liked the shots of the moving water and also the Robin.
Thank you Clare. Yes, it’s great to have spring finally here!
I didn’t think that the squirrels would eat the scilla, but I did think that they might dig them up. I used to work for a lady and squirrels and chipmunks moved her small bulbs all over her yard. We used to find them in the strangest places!
In tomorrow’s post I’m showing a photo of striped squill flowers. They look just like scilla except they’re white with a blue stripe and are really beautiful. I think you might like them.
I have some Puschkinia that have just come into flower that I planted last year and they look like your description of striped squill flowers. Do you think they are the same/related? I do like them very much and am very pleased my bulbs were viable. I look forward to your photos. An amusing story about the squirrels and chipmunks in the lady’s yard though of course not so amusing when you have to find and replant the bulbs!
Yes, the ones I’m talking about are Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica. I’m glad you grow them. Not many people do here because they’re so hard to find.
I didn’t replant the lady’s bulbs that the squirrels moved; we used to just leave them where they were and laugh about it.
I like that!
Love your shot of the honey bee rolling around in the crocus! She certainly does look happy – as we all are, with the recent warm weather.
Thanks Martha. Yes, I know just how she felt!
The red Maple flowers are beautiful. I really look closely at the tree flowers now to see if I can spot anything interesting. Amelia
Elm flowers and the stamens and pistils of some fruit tree flowers are also very colorful. I hope you’ll find plenty of interesting ones!
It’s good to see and hear that spring is finally making an appearance there so that we get to see your photos of the tiny flowers, along with the images of the river. That was a very interesting tidbit about which acorns the squirrels eat when, I never knew that before.
I also really liked the idea of the paperclip to give us an idea how small some of the subjects that you photograph are. When I first saw the photo with the paperclip, I thought that it was one of those clamps that you can purchase to hold things in place while shooting photos, I had no idea it was a paperclip.
It won’t be long now, and you’ll have plenty of spring flowers to photograph, and for us to enjoy and learn about.
Yes, spring is finally really here, I think. It seems like it’s been a long time coming but the flowers are blooming at just about the same time that they always do. I saw coltsfoot yesterday and that’s even earlier than it was in 2014.
I’m glad I thought of the paperclip. I wrestle with how best to show the size of some of these things and a paper clip is something everybody everywhere knows well.
I hope spring is springing in Michigan too!
Enjoyed this outing! Especially the above big waves. What kind of ticks do you have? I’m allergic to the “seed ticks” of 2 species. Ugh!
Thanks! We have deer ticks, wood or dog ticks, and lone star ticks. Why we have lone star ticks is beyond me, but we do. Every one of them carries some kind of disease but the deer tick is the one you really have to watch out for. I use bug spray-lots of it.
Sounds like you have the same ones we have. I’m a tad paranoid because am allergic to the seed ticks. Three years ago I got in a tick nest and had over 100 of the teeny ones on me.
That’s why I use bug spray!
I do too. I used to have pants, t-shirts and long sleeved shirts made by BuzzOff. They really worked. I didn’t wash them often. I don’t hike as often and then we have such hot summers that hiking just isn’t any fun then.
That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of insect repellant clothing.
It was great. It lasted through many washings. Naturally, I seldom washed mine.
I think we can sum up your detailed post with two words: happy spring.
That’s a good quotation from Georgia O’Keeffe. It’s her version of “Stop and smell the roses.”
Thank you Steve. Yes, It sounds like Georgia O’Keefe was going to make people stop and smell the roses whether they wanted to or not.
Happy Spring!
I particularly liked the photos of the red maple flowers, fascinating to see the detail.
Thank you Philip. Our maple trees are often the first wildflowers there are to see. There is a lot going on in a very small package!
Love your photos, and the paperclip! A “Twisted Filbert” …a hazelnut … grows a few yards from my kitchen window. All winter I watch its tight catkins and dream of the Spring day when they will soften and grow longer. It’s happened! And Sunday I looked carefully for the female flowers, no luck, but today, Wednesday, their tiny petals are peeking out. (I discovered this on my own a few years ago. The tree is 20 plus years old.)
Thank you Charlotte. I watch them all winter too, so I know just how you feel! I’m glad you discovered the female flowers. They’re so easy to miss!
I bet that after this winter it felt really, really good to see water, not snow and ice in those woods!
It sure did. That winter was a real bear and I’m hoping the next few don’t have 6 straight weeks of plowable snow!
The paper clip was a stroke of genius. I am glad that you are finally getting some release from winter’s icy grip. I liked your final shot of the river in particular.
Thank you.
I’ve tried for years to come up with a way to show readers how small some of these things are, and the paperclip is now in my wallet.
I loved the book Suburban Safari – but I forgot the bit about the squirrels and the acorns. That bee sure looks happy – I think I know how he feels!
I know exactly how he feels. I can’t remember when I wanted to see spring come so badly!
A happy post… thank you! The details on the red maple flowers are helpful – they haven’t quite opened here yet (Brattleboro) but maybe today. Heard my first peepers yesterday! Oh… on your prompting, I searched out Arrow Hill in Surry this past weekend and went up to find the carving. Such a rewarding adventure: I posted about the spot on my Abenaki blog https://sokokisojourn.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/arrow-hill/
Thank you for the inspiration. It made my day.
You’re welcome Rich and thank you. That’s an interesting post about arrow hill. I’ve heard for years that there are arrows carved into the tops of all the surrounding hills, pointing toward Monadnock as you say, but I’ve never seen a single one.
The peepers are peeping here now too. This warmth should open those maple buds in short order!
I love both of the quotes today. I have read that squirrels eat the white oak acorns right away because they have less tannin and are so are less bitter. When the red oak acorns are buried some of the tannin leaches into the soil and over time they become less bitter. Also squirrels will eat the top of the acorn seed and leave the bottom, where the tannin is more concentrated. -Susan
Thanks very much for that Susan. It all sounds very likely, but the author didn’t mention any of it in her book. One thing we can be sure of is that scientists are very interested in squirrels!
Great shot of the standing wave! Fascinating bit of information about squirrels and acorns,
Thanks! I thought the squirrel info was interesting too.
I finally ventured down to the swamp the other day. Hearing peepers for the first time Sunday night gave me the impetus I needed. I love your flower photos and O’Keefe quote. It surprised me as well to see comparisons looking back at past years photos, that spring seems to arrive around the same time no matter how severe the winter.
Thank you Jocelyn. The peepers are peeping here too! That’s true, it wasn’t noticeable to me until I started doing this blog, but flowers do seem to bloom within just a few days of the same time year after year. That’s a good thing to know when you’re out looking for them every day!
An “ecstatic frenzy”, I love it. I bet the bees are even happier than we are about spring. At least we go out in the winter, they stay cooped up in their hive/nest, eating the same old thing every day.
I never thought of that Laura. Maybe that’s why they seem so happy! I’ve never seen one actually rolling all around like that one was doing.
I have a rugosa rose hedge and sometimes it sounds like I put a hive in the middle of it. I love watching them roll around, even though I am allergic to stings.
I’ll bet that hedge attracts bees! We had one when I was growing up and it did the same. I think when the bees are in a frenzy like that they don’t even know you’re there. Or maybe they just don’t care.
Oh, send some of hose squirels over. Our front lawn is smothered with red oak acorns and its a real pain to rake them out of the grass. – Really enjoy your enthusiasm about the arrival of spring and admire your pictures.
Thank you Zyriacus.
I agree that acorns are a real pain to rake up. I’ve never found an easy way to do it either.
I don’t think you’d want our squirrels though. They are rodents after all no matter how cute, and will eat and chew just about anything. Especially bird feeders!
It is lovely to see all the signs of spring, the colour and the melting water. I loved the stream trickling over the stones and the waves in the river. Thank you for putting that paper clip to show how tiny the buds were.
You’re welcome Susan. I thought the paperclip might help. It’s great to finally see spring happening and all the ice and snow melting.