Harbingers of Spring

[Dean Romig]

Around the Shawsheen Flats it's the return of the Red-Wing Blackbirds that heralds the Spring. It seems to be earlier and earlier each year that they return. Sunday morning at about daybreak I heard them - hundreds of them high in the oaks and pines around my house and there's still more than a foot of hard frozen snow everywhere but they came up on the warm winds from the South Saturday night.
Up until then for a few weeks the Canada Geese would fly over before dawn each day calling hauntingly for landing instructions from 'birds of a feather' if there be any on the yet frozen Shawsheen marshes. Of course their pleas were unanswered so onward they flew in search of open water. Soon enough though - soon enough...