While cooped up in the house laboring over tax returns last week, I kept glancing out the window at the blooming dogwoods and the bluebirds building a nest in the yard. Ah, April, when Mother Nature beckons and Uncle Sam demands his due.

Arriving: This is peak spring migration month, when countless hummingbirds, grosbeaks, buntings, tanagers, thrushes, orioles and other neo-tropical songbirds return to breed and raise their babies. In particular, April is warbler month, when waves of the colorful, sweet-singing creatures arrive for their nesting season. To feed themselves and their babies, warblers gobble up zillions of tiny, green oakworms (moth caterpillars) and other leaf-munching insect larvae that, if left unchecked, would literally denude our woods and forests.

Charles Seabrook / Special (ENLARGE)

Dutchman's breeches were in bloom last weekend along the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail in 'the Pocket' in Walker County.

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Departing: Leaving soon will be the birds of winter, which spent the cold months in Georgia but will nest up north during spring and summer. They include common loons; cedar waxwings; ruby crowned and golden crowned kinglets; juncos; vesper, white-throated, white-crowned and swamp sparrows; brown creepers; hermit thrushes; orange-crowned warblers; red-breasted nuthatches; yellow-bellied sapsuckers; purple finches; yellow-rumped warblers; and several species of ducks.

Birth announcements: Bobcat kittens are being born in dens built in caves, rock piles, hollow logs and trees or under fallen trees. The babies of coyotes, red foxes and gray foxes are being born in dens made in hollow logs, abandoned mammal burrows along brush-covered slopes, steep banks and thickets or under rock ledges and crevices. Baby river otters are arriving in dens constructed in old muskrat lodges, abandoned burrows or hollow trees close to a water source.

Other wild April happenings:

• Endangered wood storks are beginning to breed and nest in wetland rookeries in South Georgia. Great blue herons are laying eggs in their rookeries throughout the state.

• Bobwhite quails are nesting now and will continue to do so through September.

• Most wild turkey hens are sitting on eggs in nests built on the ground.

• Black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars are feeding on parsley in the garden.

• Bullfrogs are breeding across most of the state. Listen for their deep "jug-o-rum" calls on warm spring evenings.

• Some snakes, including the Eastern hognose, rat and copperhead (poisonous) snakes, are breeding this month. So are Carolina anoles and mud turtles, snapping turtles and gopher tortoises.

• In the Okefenokee Swamp and other South Georgia wetlands, alligators are bellowing out territorial warnings as mating begins.

• Loggerhead sea turtles this month start crawling up on Georgia's barrier island beaches to lay eggs. Also on the beaches, large flocks of migrating shorebirds are resting and feeding.

• In Georgia's coastal waters, endangered right whales are departing for their summer feeding grounds off New England and Newfoundland. It was a good calving season for the whales, which produced 18 babies in their winter grounds off Georgia and North Florida.

• The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker can be seen nesting now through mid-June in older loblolly pine trees on Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge near Juliette in Middle Georgia. The red-cockaded is the only woodpecker that builds its nest in a living tree.

Bloomings

To soothe my spring fever last weekend, I drove up to one of my most favorite places in Georgia — "the Pocket" on Pigeon Mountain in Walker County. An early spring visit to the Pocket has become an annual pilgrimage of sorts for members of the Georgia Botanical Society, with whom I walked last weekend.

From the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail — an 800-foot-long boardwalk running through a deep, north-facing cove and alongside a swiftly flowing mountain stream — we photographed and enjoyed a rich array of wildflowers without walking on the fragile plants.

In his book "Georgia Nature Weekends," naturalist Terry Johnson calls the Pocket a "floral wonderland."

He says, "There are few places in Georgia where wildflower enthusiasts will find a more lush assemblage of diverse and fascinating wildflowers than the Pocket."

In their book "Favorite Wildflower Walks in Georgia," photographers Hugh and Carol Nourse of Athens say, "Many people consider [the Pocket] to be the best wildflower walk in the state from mid-March to mid-April." They note that the state Department of Natural Resources, which manages the preserve, built the boardwalk to protect the plants from being trampled.

Depending on when you visit, some two dozen wildflower species can be easily seen and photographed from the boardwalk in early spring. Some of the colorful blooms we saw last weekend were Virginia bluebells, yellow poppies, toadshade trilliums, bent trilliums, toothworts (two species), star chickweed, bloodroot, rue anemone, wild blue phlox, several species of violets, trout lilies, Dutchman's breeches, foam flower, blue cohosh, violet-wood sorrel, phacelia, wild geranium and others.

Most, if not all, of these plants and others should still be blooming through this week and next.

For directions to the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail, visit this updated Georgia waterfalls site.

In the sky

Look for a thin crescent moon on Monday night just after sunset, says Fernbank Science Center astronomer David Dundee.

Venus is very low in the west just after sunset. Mars is in the southwest just after dark and appears near the moon on the night of April 11. The giant planet Jupiter rises out of the east about an hour after midnight. Saturn is high in the south as the sky darkens.