It’s late winter in Georgia, but who cares? Spring is about to burst forth in all its glory.
From my home office window on the outskirts of Decatur this week, I could see the reddish haze of a blooming red maple in the woods along Burnt Fork Creek. A bright red male cardinal landed on a limb and began singing his soft, bubbly courtship song to a female that I suspect was nearby.
Though they’re not in full voice yet, several other songbirds are singing every morning now -- Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, Eastern phoebes, pine warblers, Eastern towhees, mockingbirds and even a brown thrasher.
A neighbor said she saw a wren fly by with a twig in its beak. Bluebirds also are singing; a pair has been checking out our bluebird box and may have started nesting.
Woodpeckers are drumming to attract mates. A spectacular sight the other day was a pair of pileated woodpeckers showing up in our backyard and checking out some dead snags.
Wood ducks are nesting; great horned owls and bald eagles are tending babies in their nests.
A friend in Byron e-mailed to say purple martins are arriving and checking out his gourd houses. My neighbor Dan messaged to say sandhill crane flocks are flying over the neighborhood, already heading back to nesting grounds up north. I checked the Georgia birders’ chat line, and sure enough it was loaded with numerous reports of northbound sandhills. It seems only yesterday that the high-flying flocks were heading south.
I also discovered this week that a pair of red-shouldered hawks is courting in our neighborhood. I heard the shrieking key-yair call of what I thought at first was a blue jay, but when I went outside to check it out, I saw instead that it was a male red-shouldered circling and calling overhead. (Blue jays can imitate a hawk's call.)
I haven’t heard spring peepers yet, but I expect they’ll be calling any day now. I have heard some upland chorus frogs in recent days. Gray squirrel and flying squirrel females soon will be giving birth to their first litters of the year. Litters of bobcats, raccoons and armadillos will be born in a few weeks. Striped skunks are roaming far and wide at night in search of mates, making themselves more vulnerable to becoming road kill.
In addition to the red maples, white-flowered chickasaw plum bushes are blooming along roadsides; serviceberry trees are putting forth their stunning white flowers along forest edges. This weekend, along several of the trails in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, yellow-flowered trout lilies, some of Georgia’s earliest spring wildflowers, should be in full bloom.
In the sky: The moon will be new on March 4 -- a thin crescent low in the west just after dark, said astronomer David Dundee with Tellus Science Museum. Venus rises out of the east about three hours before sunrise and will appear near the moon the morning of March 1. Jupiter is high in the southwest at sunset and sets about three hours later in the west. Saturn rises out of the east about 10 p.m.
About the Author
