For more than a week, robins have been appearing in both big and small groups, a sure sign that the atmosphere is getting warmer. There are always some robins that spend the winter around here in sheltered spots but a mass northbound movement of them like what's occurring now means that spring is really just around the corner.
A patch of rhubarb, a long-lived perennial that spreads by underground rhizomes, is beginning to show life. The tops of red stalks that will eventually grow to be a foot or more tall are poking up through the ground.
These stalks, or petioles, are the part of the plant that's cooked, sweetened, and used to make pies, jams, or jellies, but the leaves shouldn't be eaten because of the oxalic acid in them.
Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) has always fascinated me. As a little kid, I wondered how people found out that its stalks could be eaten because my mother constantly told me not to touch the leaves.
And even now when I know that rhubarb was used medicinally in China as far back as 2000 BC, I still wonder how many people got sick or even died from eating too much of its unpalatable parts.
Another indication that soon it will be much warmer was the sight of a common grackle, a big shiny or bronzy blackbird with a long tail, carrying nesting material into the branches of a blue spruce tree in the yard. Birds and other wild animals instinctively know when to do what, although sometimes, like humans, things don't always work out for them like they should.
A grackle nest protected inside a tree most likely can survive any kind of coming weather but early nesting eastern bluebirds may not fare as well if they build in an exposed box. Bluebirds often begin nesting during the first extended warm spell but if it gets real cold the eggs or nestlings die.
When that happens, though, they just move to a different cavity and start over again.
In spring, I'm often asked how to attract bluebirds but that's not an easy question to answer. Bluebirds are very habitat specific.
They nest in natural tree cavities or man-made boxes but their preferred nest sites are near big open grassy areas or fields into which they can swoop down and grab insects, grubs, and caterpillars. Seldom do you see bluebirds in cities or heavily-developed suburbia but it can happen.
Another indication that things outside are changing was an eastern phoebe perched on a pole in the yard. It constantly flew down toward the ground or out into the air after food but it always returned to its original perch.
Phoebes are the earliest members of the flycatcher family to travel north in the spring. They don't travel in flocks and they don't eat seeds but they're great insect control agents.
Everyone measures spring's arrival differently, be it by flowers, fishing, baseball, or golfing, but for me I know spring is almost here when I see that first phoebe.