Ruddy Duck pair in courtship swim, photo by Len Blumin.

 I know what the calendar says, but hints of spring are in the air.  Largely it’s a matter of listening.  The Flickers have been making their series calls, a string of up to twenty whistles with a rising and falling pitch.  Early one morning a pair clung side by side to the top of a still leafless oak.  But the willows are beginning to bud, some showing yellow-green switches.  The eager forsythia in our yard is preparing to throw open its buttery blossoms even if they get covered one more time with a spring snowfall. 

I saw a pair of Dippers on Ashland Creek sharing a single small boulder.  One had been singing softly while the other approached.  Often Dippers are like phoebes and jealous of even the hint that a fellow Dipper is intruding. 

Two Red-tailed Hawks circled in tandem over Bear Creek.  One gave the thin, shrill whistle of their kind.  A preliminary courtship flight over their nesting territory?  A pair of Rock Pigeons were carrying nesting material into the aluminum roof of a Union 76 station.  A bird whose ancestors came  from the Mideast now living above a gas station selling petroleum from the pigeons’ homeland.

Male Spotted Towhees are being particularly firm about clinging to the favored brushpile or thicket.  And Bewick’s Wrens have been heard to sing in the past week or so.

Male Lesser Goldfinches are now bolding cloaked in their black, green and yellow outfits.  Msale Ruddy Ducks here are mostl;y migratory but they already have the red plumage and bright blue bill of breeding season.  Spring is the season for the highest tide of testosterone and the freshet seems to be a-building.  On a warm afternoon I know I saw a single optimistic butterfly pass the south window in our kitchen.  That evening a lone moth fluttered under the carport light.

But not to get too carried away: no Turkey Vultures have yet ventured back north of Redding.  The lone Osprey in our valley is the one who’s steadfastly braved the cold and frozen ponds here all winter.  The Bushtits, kinglets, Golden-crowned Sparrows are sticking to their flocks or routines as winter requires.  The Mountain Chickadees remain down here at two thousand feet where the air is too heavy, but warmer than their usual neighborhood.   Not one of our many Juncos has uttered the one-pitch trill that thrills the female Junco each year.

Robins here now are a mix of Canadian and Alaskan races, and in dense flocks not even ready to begin to think of migrating or nesting.

Some random observations

Bushtits at Agate Lake use thin fishing filament to build their nests.  So in this season these impregnable, non-biodegradable nests still hang on the barren limbs.  It’s a tribute to Bushtit ingenuity and perserverance.  My wife wonders: do they know that such material is far harder for a jay to tear apart?  Will these fishing-tackle ‘tits become a master race of their species, with nests able to withstand predation from larger birds?

A still and silent Sharp-shinned Hawk spent more than half an hour in a single perch atop a bare tree over-looking the quarry on upper Granite Street.  I am not sure he thought the sunshine and warmth were an improvement over white snow when every little bird is clearly visible to his sharp eyes.

Do peanuts cause a hangover in jays?  The jays around our garden seem to awaken  in a quarrelsome, querulous mood.  They begin scolding and screaming just after dawn.  Stella the Steller insists she cannot start her day without her peanut fix.  I feel like a pusher barista at Starbuck’s, saving the desparate consumer from falling apart without the morning dose.

Up in the woods a half-mile from the nearest house Bridget and I found a Douglas Squirrel, happy to have the ground thawed and snowless.  These small brown squirrels are about thalf the size of the muscular Western Grays that congregate in our garden or wherever an easy-picking is to be found down in the town.  The Douglas is an evergreen specialist, knocking seed cones to the ground, then harvesting and storing them against winter and hard times.  We should yet be getting some snow and cold that will make him out to be a highly evolved survivor of the Siskiyou winter.