Here come the birds!
Spring is in the air, and we can feel and hear it as Northern Cardinals, American Robins, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatches, Song Sparrows, and WoodPeckers are plentiful at the bird feeder singing, chirping, and pecking away. The temperatures are rising, and the need for those puffy jackets, wool coats, and accessories can soon be safely packed away or donated to Goodwill, the Veterans Association, or a homeless shelter.
Trees and flowers are next!
Depending on where you live, you may start to see buds arrive on trees, shrubs, and spring flowers such as Snowdrops who are beginning to peek out from under the layers of leaves or remnants of snow. These delicate beautiful white flowers are so lovely to see. By snipping a few and bringing some springtime joy inside, they always brighten up a little vase as well as put a smile on our faces. On those dreary days of the late winter season moving into spring, another wonderfully easy way to bring nature inside is to force plants such as Forsythia and Pussy Willows into blooming. The process is quite simple; check out Fine Gardening for forcing branches to bloom indoors during the winter season.
Daffodils
Crocuses
grape hyacinths
Crocuses, daffodils, and grape hyacinths are the next bulbs that flower in the mid-Atlantic area.
They are a great signal to get out into the woods to see what spring ephemerals are blossoming under any snow that remains. We love using free apps such as iNaturalist, PictureThis, and Google Lens to help identify various plants, moss, ferns, mushrooms, and trees. One can also identify birds, insects, etc. with these same apps.
Bring on the BioBlitz!
Spring is a great time to catalog what one is seeing in nature. A fun activity would be to create a BioBlitz challenge event amongst family, friends, colleagues, etc. that would focus on finding and identifying as many springtime plants, trees, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and fungi over a short period – perhaps a day or weekend.
If you have access to an Olloclip, Xenvo, or a Macro Fisheye for your mobile phone, you will find that these lens systems will open up a whole new world of discovery of the natural world up close. We promise it to be fun and cool to see nature from this perspective.
Here is to your Spring adventure! Be sure to post and share some of your Bio Blitz photos on our One Planet Life app.
