On The Trails: Spring comes...in its own time

An adult trumpeter swan stopped to feed on its way north. (Photo by Bob Armstrong)

By Mary F. Willson

All that snow — over 16 feet of it! We shoveled. We dealt carefully with the blind junctions, where huge snow berms meant you couldn’t see the cross traffic until you pulled your car well out into their lane. We shoveled again and we dreamed of spring.

At the end of March and in early April, a series of fine sunny days stirred up more hopes. And then there were a couple more snow flurries…and except for the lengthening days, the signs of spring were few at first.

Eagles were paired up, ravens canoodled in pairs, and cottonwood buds began to swell. Juncos trilled and a song sparrow gave his full song. Gulls began to fly up toward their nesting cliffs near the glacier. Purple mountain saxifrage budded and bloomed near Nugget Falls. There were reports of sapsuckers in the woods, and a sapsucker roused a friend one morning by hammering on her house. Crocuses flowered in gardens next to house foundations, although other flower beds were still mostly well-covered in white blankets.

Trumpeter swans appeared in the Mendenhall River for several weeks. Some of them were sub-adults, with grayish plumage on head and neck. These swans are reported to migrate north in family groups — parents with their over-wintered offspring of the previous year. They were stopping over on their way up north and the river offered some open water when our local ponds were still frozen. Family groups separate at nesting time, when the adults start a new family and the sub-adults go off on their own, maturing at age four (or more).

And, hallelujah! Robins appeared along the dike trail. One morning, at the trailhead, I was told of a group of robins grubbing around in the gravelly turf near the trail, but they were gone when I got there. Perhaps too much four-footed and two-footed traffic on the trail? So I sauntered along, hoping to see them for myself. After a time, I heard one calling and eventually I found it, high in the top of a spruce.

Crocuses bloom in a warmer spot near a foundation. (Photo by Martina Kallenberger)

In early April, I went down to Sandy Beach, dearly wishing to see and hear a song sparrow that often hangs out in the shrubbery near the parking lot. I slowly walked the edge of the parking lot for a while, hearing only little chip notes from some invisible critter. Then a few scratchy calls, and a chase when one sparrow harassed another.  And finally, several renditions of the full song! A satisfactory morning for me.

Near the visitor center, the felt-leaf willows had fuzzy, gray catkins in early April. Some were still losing their bud covers, but one was in full bloom. This willow is usually the first willow to flower in spring. In some years, these individuals flower in early March!  The willows are an important food source for early-flying bumblebee queens (which pollinate the flowers while foraging), but I have yet to see a bee. 

In the second week of April, a friend reported hearing a varied thrush song, somewhere up Perseverance Trail. On the dike trail, the swans were still visible on the river. There were two yellow-legs foraging in the shallows. Best of all was a big flock of robins in a limited patch of not-yet-green grass near the trailhead. There were 18 of them and more coming in. All the ones that I saw were males, with dark black heads. They ran to and fro, poking into the grass in hopes of finding something edible.

For me, that’s how this spring comes: a little bit here, a little bit there. I imagine that all of us have some special things we yearn to hear or see, telling us of the coming of spring. One of these days, we can perhaps say that it is really here! But I wonder if all those piles of snow may delay full arrival; the deep snow will not disappear everywhere at the same time, so there may be sizable differences among different places, possibly emphasizing Juneau’s microclimate/microhabitat variation. We shall see…

• Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. "On The Trails" appears periodically in the Juneau Independent. For a complete archive of Mary Willson’s “On the Trails” essays, go to https://onthetrailsjuneau.wordpress.com