Firstly, those of you who received blog notification of my post yesterday. The new form of WordPress continues to confound. If you want to see the video of Cape Hedge Beach, you need to “View on a Browser,” always the recommended approach.

Today we’ve got spring! It is everywhere, and the wildlife is reading it as if they consulted a calendar. I went to Great Meadow in Concord, MA and saw: hooded merganzers, redwings, grackles, crows, song sparrows, the season’s first warbler, Canadian geese, swans, scaubs, garter snakes, turtles, beaver,and a juvenile bald eagle. So let’s start the season off right with my favorite duck. The hooded merganzer (Lophodytes cucullatus).

The fellow of Figure 1 was all alone – the lone bachelor. He was not accompanied by any beautiful cinnamon fuzzy-headed females. But they are there as well.

So spring. Hooray! Let’s stick to Geoffrey Chaucer (Prelude to the Canterbury Tales)

BotPresentation

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…

And so dear friends, get thee goon into the meadows, beaches, and woodlands!