Tag: spring fever

Stirrings of spring

So you think spring is stirring in your bones. Whatever fever you’re feeling, it’s probably not as strong as the migration tug in birds to the south of us these March days.

Spring is stirring in not only the bones of birds, but also in their brains—yes, bird brains—urging them to point their beaks northward and get on with what’s arousing their feathers, tingling their wings. It’s the stirring of migration and nesting, the need to nuture a family. It’s the awakening once again to get on with the survival of the species.

A migration study has found that birds’ urge to fly north in the spring has such an urgency that they make their spring return journey to our yards, fields and forests two to six times faster than their southward flight in fall. Scientists are now tracking entire migration routes, speeds and stopover locations of individual songbirds, using tiny geolocators, the first tracking devices small enough and light enough for songbirds to carry.

Weighing a fraction of an ounce, geolocators don’t slow the flight, say scientists. One female purple martin was tracked averaging 358 miles a day while winging northward more than 4,500 miles in only 13 days. That’s nearly four times faster than scientists previously thought. (Come to think about it, translating wings to tires, the 358 miles a day would also be pretty good for traveling cross-country by car or RV.)

Not only are we finding that birds migrate at a faster flight speed in spring than previously thought, we are also finding that the fall migration is more leisurely, with long layovers. Could it be that after all the hustle and bustle of nesting is over the birds simply slow down, take a breather and enjoy themselves?

But come spring, they feel the overwhelming urge to travel and stake a claim in the northland (as was the scarlet tanager in the above photo from a past spring). They’re feeling the urge to build a nest and raise young. They’re feeling it right now, a thousand or more miles away. Your bluebird, your robin, your oriole, your hummingbird—yes, all of them and more—are booking a flight to travel swift and light.

Our buds of winter

They’ve been there all winter, you know, those buds on the trees. Perhaps we will notice them more now as temperatures moderate and we get outside to look for signs of winter giving up. When we see the buds, we can appreciate that they’ve survived below-zero days and nights to give us hope for spring and all its greenness.

Buds form in late summer at the base of leaf stems. As soon as colored leaves fall in autumn, the new buds enveloping next spring’s new leaves, flowers and stems are visible. But we may be too busy raking leaves to notice the infancy of next year’s crop.

It’s more fun to take a look now as we search for signs of approaching spring. Against a blue sky of February, the buds of birch, maple, box elder and lilac trees in the back yard are easily revealed. So when we say trees are “budding” in spring, what we actually mean is that the buds that have been there all winter are “bursting.” Yes, in spring, the buds will be warmed and swell to a point that they burst from the outer scale that protected them in their dormant state of winter.

I snipped off a twig from the birch tree and slit open the scale with a sharp knife to reveal a tiny green bud—a leaf—about a quarter-inch long. Imagine, these little green leaves wrapped up tight and protected from the days and nights of below-zero temperatures. These miniscule oblong buds, now tucked inside the hard cover of the bud scale, will emerge as tiny leaves and grow and grow and grow into our summer shade and fall colors.

So take a look this winter at the tree buds and wonder at the precision of nature in protecting what will be the beauty of trees through spring, summer and fall. These buds over the next couple of months will be teased to burst open with spring fever, much the same as every one of us. But we will all have to wait until the time is right.