The leaves of sugar maple seedlings don’t look at all like maple leaves. They have no lobes or very small lobes at best. You can see the seed leaves, the cotyledons, below. Last year’s seedlings are very small but they have maple shaped leaves – and no cotyledons. Plenty of both this year.

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A friend and I were trying to decide which birds were the most aggressive at the birdfeeder and we concluded that they all were pretty feisty, from the mourning doves right down to the hummingbirds.
It continues to be scarily dry and crunchy in the woods, with no major rains in the forecast. Even a short-lived thunderstorm would be eagerly welcomed at this point.
All the other spring ephemerals are flowering. Among the loveliest are Dutchman’s breeches, trout lily, toothwort. I could go on, they all are lovely.
Still no snow on the ground. Rain-soaked brown leaves cover paths but in the woods mosses and liverworts in many shades of green brighten things up.
Our dog flushed a grouse off a nest containing just three eggs this morning. Grouse normally incubate 9 to 14 eggs but when, after shooing off the dog, I reached into the brush pile to straighten out the situation, the eggs were warm, suggesting that this female was calling it quits at three.
Luckily, singing season for the veery lasts a long time. They’re still at it, mostly in the mornings and evenings.
Snowy owls have recently been seen in Vermont. We’ve all heard that they leave their arctic home when food there is scarce but another reason for these erratic irruptions might instead be that they occur following an unusually successful breeding season – successful because of an abundance of prey.
The year’s first chanterelles should be glowing brightly on the forest floor.