miscellaneous spring

I went out to Lester and Amity in search of spring ephemerals today, because I've only ever seen hepatica and bloodroot in gardens, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen spring beauty. But alas that ephemerals have thwarted me once again. I have it on good authority that hepatica was blooming in Jay Cooke last week, but getting out to Jay Cooke without a vehicle is a significant undertaking. At least the maple flowers were pretty.

There were lots of downy woodpeckers, and some brown creepers, juncos, and nuthatches, plus a mystery raptor that I did not get a good look at through the trees (bigger than a crow, smaller than an eagle, dark (or maybe just in shadow) with upturned wingtips). I also saw a chickadee hunting a moth, and while I know that they'll eat bugs if the bugs present themselves, I've never seen one actively hunting an airborne insect. The chickadee was not successful.

I saw my first bumblebee on March 31, but in the past few days they are suddenly everywhere, and there were plenty in Lester. My first butterfly of the year was a mourning cloak on March 23, and there have been cabbage whites around the yard, and then today in Lester I saw a little blue butterfly, probably a spring azure, but he wouldn't let me get a good look or a decent picture. Possibly saw a dragonfly today, but it was just a zipping something at the edge of my vision, and I'm not willing to commit to an ID.

In regards to the calender and the weather, this past winter was short and mild, but spring this year has come on so early and so quickly that it feels unreal or imaginary. I was expecting another two months of cold and snow and grayness, so to see the trees leafing out, a blush of green against a bright blue sky, feels startling and miraculous.

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On a side note, I'll sometimes backdate entries like this (I'm writing this on Sunday, not Saturday the 17th) so that relevant information will have a post date for the day it actually happened. This is for the sake of my own record keeping, but I was thinking--does this screw things up for feeds/RSS/whatever or otherwise complicate things for anyone? (I think I have all of three regular readers.)