“News, Weather and Sports” is announced on the television several times a day, as if they are three subjects.
But they aren’t three subjects, they’re one subject. They’re all news. Weather and sports are just as much news as the events in Afghanistan or a fire or a robbery or shooting.
Everyone will agree, I believe, that extreme weather, a tropical storm or hurricane, a tornado, a torrential rain and flooding are news. An earthquake, too, is news, but is an earthquake weather? Is a light summer rain news?
What about weather in the big picture? What about global warming? With eight of the last nine years the warmest on record, does anybody still deny global warming? In northern Indiana, my home, last winter we only had enough snow for us to call and have the driveway plowed twice. Now, after the scarcity of snow last winter, does any Hoosier deny global warming?
What about the birds? Cardinals and turkey vultures and several other species have extended their range north. When I moved to Indiana, many years ago, the northern limit of the range of cardinal and turkey vulture was the southern boundary of Indiana. Now both cardinals and turkey vultures are common in northern Indiana, my home. Male goldfinches have changed from winter drab to summer gold.
Mourning doves have extended their winter range. I didn’t see mourning doves in winter when I moved to Indiana. Now there are mourning doves at my bird feeders every day of the year except when the weather is stormy. I saw robins on lawns around my home last winter, chipping sparrows at my bird feeders and a great blue heron flying over and standing among the cattails of the marsh by our pasture.
Trees and bushes have been leafed out for weeks. Many wildflowers have bloomed or are in bloom, marsh marigold, springbeauty, toadshade and many other wildflowers have bloomed or are in bloom indicating the change of season.
Now, in the North American northwest and west, there is a heat wave, temperatures recorded daily in three digits. But that, some people say, is due to wild fires, not weather. Fire is certainly a contributing factor but the heat, most people believe it is due to a combination of weather and fires.
Here’s an interesting thing to consider. With spring being earlier, will mourning doves and robins and other birds begin to nest earlier? Will they have more broods, two or three instead of one or two?
Most birds in North America have been declining in number. Christmas bird counts, spring bird counts and breeding bird surveys all indicate that the birds of North America have declined in number by one-third since I was a boy. Will the birds of North America now begin to increase?
Days are getting longer and warmer, most days.
Birds are mating, nesting. Robins sing to the dawn. A pair of house wrens made a nest on top of the light fixture on our front porch, raised a brood and appear to be incubating eggs of a second brood.
A pair of sandhill cranes nested in our pasture, hatched two little ones and entertained us leading the little cranes about the pasture.
Rabbits are out and about, and woodchucks, frogs and toads and turtles. And insects, mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies and wood ticks. Cicadas call. Deer have fawns. I’ve seen a doe and a fawn in the field across the road several times. Our dogs, too, have seen the deer and would have given chase if my daughter hadn’t had the dogs on leash.
These are great days to be out and about, to look for and listen to birds, to watch for other critters, to swat mosquitoes and other pests.
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