Conk-la-ree! Conk-la-ree! Dtdtdteeeeeeee! Loud and many. From the neighbor's tall holly just over the fence. Sounded like red-winged black birds to me—couldn't be—not this early. But yes, on closer inspection, the holly was nearly saturated with blackbirds. So they're already beginning their pass-through on their way to parts further north, soon to be here in huge flocks that cover the ground. Our warm winter has fooled them.
I returned home on Jan 31st, after a month away, to daffodils already in bloom. Earliest I've ever seen them is Valentine's Day, often not till early March.
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| daffodils in early Feb, 2012 |
The winter hellebores have only just bloomed! Daffodils? Impossible.
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| winter helleborus, Feb 8, 2012 |
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| helleborus, Feb 8, 2012 |
I shouldn't have been surprised, because the day I left home, on Jan 2nd, the flowering quince blossoms were just beginning to open—so early I feared they would live to regret it. But they flourished, and I nearly missed them.
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| flowering quince, just past peak bloom, Feb 8, 2012 |
The camellias that usually show in late Feb & March are falling all over themselves trying to outbloom each other.
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| pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012 |
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| pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012 |
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| magniflora, Feb 8, 2012 |
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| magniflora, Feb 8, 2012 |
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| big red, Feb 8, 2012 |
The cherry buds are swollen and purple, at least four weeks early. I'll be perturbed with Jack Frost if he spoils the backyard cherry blossom show this year.
And just now, as I take my hour of long-sitting in the backyard for the first time since I've been home, who's that I see in hot pursuit of whom? None other than Sir & Madame Bluebird! While I can't be sure it's the same pair I watched through the 2011 nesting season, there can be no mistaking what this pair has in mind today. Such a teasing and fluttering and darting and chasing and fluffing—in and out of the branches behind the copper roofed bird house. My oh my.
General Beauregard Lee, Georgia's legendary ground hog at Yellow River Game Ranch, who has a 94% accuracy rate, predicted an early spring when he made no shadow on Feb 2, but I don't think even
he meant
this early.
Wonder what all this says about the kind of summer we're in for, and if the early warming is the certain result of our longterm careless environmental behaviors. dkm
