In this week's episode, notes from Bill Felker's 40 years of observing what happens in nature.
Bill Felker: On hillsides, the springs and brooks are clear in the watercress, bright even in the darkest of January days.
Under snow, new chickweed covers parts of the bottomland. Basal foliage of sweet rockets and leaf cup is lush, tall.
In fields and hedgerows, leaves of thistles, mint leaf cup, and mullen remain undamaged by the cold. The curled cones of skunk cabbage are open just a little in the wetlands. When the snow melts, the landscape appears part early spring, part late autumn. The grass greening in patches and October leaves darkening in decay.
Pale green Osage fruits have become speckled with age, many of them shredded by squirrels and raccoons. Coral berries are becoming paler and bitter. Sweet hulls and red winter berries lie all about the ground. Purple dead metal has expanded into mounds.
A few pussy willows have cracked. A few snowdrops and crocuses have started to push up through the mulch, even under the snow. Sometimes, male cardinals and tufted titmice make tentative mating calls. Downy woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers feed in the trees. Kingfishers scream along the river. Overwintering robins cluck in the crab apples. Sometimes...sometimes even the last sandhill cranes fly overhead, the last of the migrants.
I'll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Deep Winter. In the meantime, listen...listen to the silence of the winter mornings. In just a couple of weeks, the pre-dawn birdsong chorus will begin.
Bill Felker contributes to newspapers nationwide, including the "Yellow Springs News." Bill resides in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Poor Will's Almanack is brought to you by Tree Care Inc., offering services in arboriculture throughout the region. Trees make life better.
