Outdoors

With the arrival of spring every year, I begin to receive phone calls from the readers of this column, asking for advice on how to keep woodpeckers from making holes in their houses. All members of the woodpecker family are designed with stiff tail feathers and strong feet to prop themselves against tree trunks, and sharp stout beaks to make holes in wood.

The next two months are the most exciting time of the year to all birders. They are the months of spring migration, when thousands of birds move from South and Central America to their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada.
It is not quite clear why birds make this journey of thousands of miles twice a year, but they do. Many of them migrate at night. Unseen, they pass overhead with no one the wiser except for hearing their call notes. Call notes are short chirps that birds use to keep their flocks together in flight.

Oh, how good the sweet fresh air feels. I am sitting in the yard at the Life Care Center, and I can’t begin to describe what a pleasure it is to get outside.
Yesterday was Friday, March 18, and a small band of mule deer wandered through the yard. The band included one male, two females and one young.
He was no longer spotted but was very small. I wondered if it would make it through the winter.

Reprinted from March 15, 2006

March came in like a lamb, but it was a very frisky one. The day was warm, blue and spring-like, but that little lamb kicked up its heels, creating a considerable amount of wind. Since then, March has been as fickle as usual, with warm near-70-degree days spiced with spring snow and typical wind.