THE SURGE OF THE SPRING SEASON

Rex Burress

 

Animals and plants are eager to start the new year, even in January when freezing cold covers the Midwest and winter fights to hold on a little longer against the advancing heat of the sun.

Pictures of a pair of bald eagles on a gigantic stick nest appeared from a site in Missouri in mid-January this year, and like penguins tending an egg in the blizzards of Antarctica, they, too, appeared ready to lay the egg whatever the weather. Great-Horned Owls also begin brooding eggs in winter. Feathers seem inadequate against ice, but birds do it.

Waterfowl hold off on the return trip to tundra nesting grounds usually until March, but many will be lured forth during a February warm day to begin migration. Like 1849 gold rushers trying to beat the crowd to a bonanza, birds are eager to claim a good nesting place. Both the bird and the gold hunter have a plan, but there is danger and they may not make it. Thus is life.

In the milder climate around Oroville, grasses get started with the first winter rain, and by January manzanita is blooming, hoping to attract a hardy insect to spread the pollen. Pipevine and wild cucumber are also January bloomers.

Not so in the Missouri hills when roots try to break free from frozen ground by April when the mayapples rise from the woodland duff and morel mushrooms start popping forth.

A showy sign of spring along the Feather River is the almond tree bloom, nearly always opening some white glory by the first of February. [Found my first in 2018 on January 23]. When Stu Shaner was living on the other side of the river from me, we vied to see who was the first to report an almond blossom. Some River Watchers drop out, but nature's wildlife seasons return over and over again. Miss you Stu!

Wildflowers take a little longer, but it's always uplifting to see the first of any new comer. Even in January a buttercup must be peeking out in the Table Mountain ravines, with a host of soil-sharing species poised to erupt from seeds and bulbs like a mass invasion. Some of the first risers are the singular stemmed 'nut grasses'--the blue dicks and shooting stars-- the little nutritious bulbs on which the Native Americans depended. The Maidu tribe's women would prod the fields with sharpened sticks to gather the bulbs, noticed by the 1849'ers who called them “Diggers,” later considered derogatory and dropped. Even the Digger Pine name was changed to 'Grey Pine.'

Beneath the barren boughs of deciduous oaks, there is an urgency among the shallow-rooted herbaceous plants—a race to finish their seed-making rituals before the seasonal rains recede from the topsoil. The oaks are nodding sleepily, without the need “to fill the trees with another shade” ...yet , preparing to progress over the long haul of the summer dry season, relying on deep roots to tap the water table.

The lowland shooting stars bend their curled white heads sometime in early March around Table Mountain. One by one a couple hundred other species seem to take turns to advance week by week, as if each had reservations for water and a spot in the sun. Flower lovers watch for them, joyously, like long-lost old friends meeting again.

Animals and plants respond to the newly-revived sun with life, lifting the veil high to let the sunshine in. “However it is in some other world, I know this is the way in ours.”