Spring Arrivals

The summer residents are beginning to return to my neck of the woods. The neighborhood is getting noisy again, as the spring peepers tune up and the birds begin to sing their spring melodies. Here are some excerpts from my journal pages about the recent arrivals:
April 9 Phoebes are back.
April 10 I scared a pair of ducks up out of the stream behind the house. I think they are American Black Ducks.
April 15 We have a woodfrog chorus this evening, with one lone, cold spring peeper joining in. The sparrows are returning, and the first small fiddleheads are showing in the woods.
April 16 I got a glimpse of our groundhog tenant today, who was digging out the hole behind the shop in the early morning. It is a smallish blonde one (the groundhogs in this neighborhood seem to be strawberry blonde instead of brown). The diggings must be extensive; the dirt pile is getting bigger and bigger.
April 17 The mourning doves are back. The peeper chorus has started up in earnest.
April 19 The ticks are out, and the first daffodils are blooming. We didn't use to have ticks around here. They first started showing up around 5 years ago. I saw a pair of swallows, high above the meadow. I watched minnows in the stream for a while. They ranged from 1 1/2" to 3 1/2" in length. I guess that is what the kingfisher has been hanging around for. The ducks are definitely black ducks. I saw them this time before they saw me. The bloodroot is just beginning to bloom now. This is about a week earlier than it bloomed last year, and 2 to 3 weeks earlier than 10 years ago.
April 22 The white-throated sparrows are back, singing their sweet song in the front yard. The forsythia beside the silver maple is blooming. There are just a few small patches of tired old snow on the mountainside now. That's all that's left of winter.