Spring Comes In on Bluebirds' Wings

Gusty, gutsy, beautiful March!

Mar 29, 2025

My heart goes out to those whose homes are threatened by wildfires in the Carolinas and elsewhere, and to the dedicated, tireless fire fighters and their support teams. In their honor, and to perhaps lift our spirits, I’m reposting “Spring Comes In on Bluebirds’ Wings”, which I published on March 30, 2023. May everyone be safe well, and home again soon.

The post:

Ready or not, March is everything all at once.

Storms, sudden wind, balmy air one day and frost the next, fierce green shoots, pollen, one yellow swallowtail butterfly, bugs and sunning lizards, bluebirds, thrashers, loud flights of crows, blue sky and billowy clouds, blossoms, birdsong at dawn. It’s the great unfurling of spring.

The gardener looks over the meadow to see what plants have survived the winter and which birdhouses need spring cleaning.

Charles Dickens wrote in Great Expectations,

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

One day recently just before dawn, I wondered which bird was loudly waking the others in the small laurel grove near the house.

If you don’t know about the free BirdNET app, you might want to add it to your smart phone. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is part of this research platform. The website says,

[We are] focused on the detection and classification of avian sounds – we want to assist experts and citizen scientists in their work of monitoring and protecting our birds.

I asked Sam to take pictures of BirdNET on my phone so I could show you how easy it is to use. First you record the call, then highlight it, and analyze it. I found that my wake-up bird was a Carolina Wren.

But there are some things I can’t show you. I can’t capture the sound of birdwings at the edge of the woods as I take in laundry from the line, or the silent passage of three crows flying west over the freshly tilled garden.

Like the French writer Colette’s mother, Sido, who wouldn’t leave home to visit her daughter because her plant that flowered every two years was about to bloom, I stay home in the spring.

As if carried on the wind, I am in thrall to the moods of March. And I can’t tell you how the peace of a morning mist, with the outside world in turmoil, can break your heart.

Sometimes your heart can be blown here and there as you look for a break from the harsh daily news. For example, you might find yourself far from our Appalachian mountains, in Willa Cather’s childhood Nebraska. She wrote,

There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful… If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.

But then you find yourself distracted by the here and now. You go outside. Like the sleeping birds in the laurel, you too are part of this late March evening.