Spring has spung, the grass has riz
I wonder where the birdies is?Anonymous (and probably with good reason)
For me, one of the first signs of spring is the Red-winged Blackbird.
It’s a familiar summer visitor in Michigan and can easily be identified by its scarlet and yellow wing stripes. The bird is about the size of a robin and arrives early in our state, often before the snow has completely melted and just as the first green shoots are stirring from their winter slumber.
I saw the blackbird for the first time this season at our place in Harrison, Michigan this weekend, or should I say I heard one. I never did glimpse the bird that was sitting somewhere in the cattail rushes at the west end of our two-acre pond. I heard its call as I was walking out onto the ice, just a moment or so before I fell through the surface into the pond’s frigid knee-deep water.
Thin ice: that’s another way I knew spring would soon arrive.
Trains, Reins and Shantyboys 