We’ve gained an hour and 9 minutes of light since the winter solstice.

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The green frog tadpoles that overwintered in our pond are getting legs, mostly back legs at this point. Meanwhile, adult females are laying small eggs in big masses. It takes a year to make a green frog.
Toads in the garden and in the lawn. It’s time to do some mowing, but toads come first.
When woodpeckers feed their fledglings there’s a big racket, including relentless shrieking.
Starflower (Trientalis borealis) is a 4-inch high plant that doesn’t last very long and has small flowers, typically just one or two. The leaves are in a whorl, commonly of seven leaves and the small white flowers usually have seven petals. I don’t know of any other plants that grow in sevens, but maybe there are some. Another feature of starflower that is unusual is the flower stalks: at about an inch long, they are as slender as a fine thread. You can barely see them.
Both male and female downy and hairy woodpeckers are supposed to begin their territorial drumming around this time, now that the days are getting longer. But some have been heard practicing over the past couple of weeks.
The temperature was -12.8 here last night, the coldest night of the winter thus far.
The green frog eggs laid at the warm edges of our pond hatched in about three days and the tiny tadpoles are nowhere to be seen.
Unlike many of us humans, rattlesnakes like it hot, especially the females. When pregnant, a female’s body temperature is 6 to 8 degrees C higher than normal, which enables the embryos to develop.