We should observe the seasonal drama of the air, its heat and cold, its moisture and color, its fragrances. We need to know which way the winds blow, and what dust or pollen they carry. What birds, beasts, insects, and wild plants are native to the area? What crops thrive there? What bushes and flowers and trees blossom in that place, and when? What creatures sing? The answers to those questions help reveal where we actually live.

Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center

EPHEMERIS

FOR THE THIRD WEEK OF EARLY SPRING

The Fifteenth Week Of The Natural Year

When Pussy Willows Emerge

The Running Maple Sap Moon wanes until it enters its final quarter at 10:42 a.m. on March 7. Rising in the evening and setting after sunrise, this moon is overhead before dawn.

BUZZARD SPRING

    The below-average temperatures of the past month made the first weeks of Early Spring the cruelest since 2007, and the 25 inches of snow that covered my yard in Yellow Springs, Ohio was the most to fall in February since the second month of 1910 brought almost 32 inches to town. It fact, it seemed as March approached that winter would never end and that there was no such thing as Early Spring.

    Still, the seasons are only partly dependent on the weather, and many cycles of the natural year progress with regularity in spite of extremes of cold or heat. Although the foliage of early spring was hidden by the storms of the 5th, the 9th and the 15th, the foliage of aconites and snow crocus had already begun to appear during the Groundhog Day thaw. Snowdrops were budded. Intrepid skunks continued to mate on the west side of town, and cardinals kept to their regimen of calling half an hour before sunrise. The mourning doves, two weeks late, were overcome by the Cross-Quarter Day warm-up and began to sing with the cardinals on February 23.

    Even in the middle of Deep Winter, the local vultures provided clear encouragement to those disheartened by the weather. Forty years ago, buzzards were mid-March arrivals in Ohio. Toward the end of the last century, though, they tended to stay later in the fall and return two to four weeks earlier than during the 70s.

    Black vultures, which usually remain south of the Ohio River, were reported in the southwestern part of the state in 2004. Betty Ross from the Raptor Center near Yellow Springscalled on November 24 that year and said she had seen a flock of crows attacking a black vulture. She added that black vultures hadn’t been in this area until just the last year or two.

    This past autumn, black buzzards were seen along Corey Street late into the year, and an entire flock remained at least until January 4, when Casey Cassenheiser called: “Get in your pickup,” he said, “and drive down Grinnell Road by the spring. There’s a deer carcass there and about fifteen buzzards.” I did what he said to do, and indeed there were fifteen black buzzards, bold as could be, feeding by the side of the road.

     On January 23, Rick Donahoe sighted one buzzard, and on January 25, Carolyn Treadway wrote: “I saw a small flock of vultures, including both turkey and black, in the northeast corner of the Morris Bean prairie, some in trees, some on the ground.”

     On the last day of the first Early Spring thaw, February 22, Casey called again to report 30 to 40 buzzards at their roost along Corey Street. He said he didn’t know if they had spent the winter or had just returned but that they were “quite a flock.”

     These and many other sightings since the turn of the millennium suggest that the vultures may have established a new regimen for themselves here, sometimes staying the entire year, possibly offering testimony to a warming world, certainly offering assurance that the cold really will end, that the robins will sing before dawn in a week or two and that the wildflowers will bloom in the woods in April.

THE STARS OF MARCH
    The evenings of March bring Castor and Pollux of Gemini directly overhead. Cancer follows close behind, carrying Mars with it. Winter’s Orion has moved into the western sky, and its outrider, the Pleiades star group, disappears into the horizon just after midnight. The pointers of the Big Dipper have moved deep into the center of the heavens and are pointing out the North Star to their northwest.

THE WEATHER SYSTEMS
    Major March weather systems are due to cross the Mississippi River on March 2, 5 (usually the most severe front of the month), 9 (ordinarily followed by quite mild temperatures), 14, 19 (frequently the second-coldest front of March), 24 (often followed by the best weather so far in the year), and 29.
This week, the percentage of afternoon highs in the teens and 20s drops to between five and ten percent per day, the first time that has happened since early December. The skies continue to brighten, with March 3 bringing a 70 percent chance for sun, and the 7th an 80 percent chance. The wettest day of the week is usually the 4th; it has a 60 percent chance for showers or flurries. March 5 and 6 aren't far behind: 50 percent chance for precipitation those days.

COUNTDOWN TO MIDDLE SPRING
On March 3, the sun reaches a full 70 percent of the way to equinox. It won’t be long now until real spring weather! The sun reaches a declination of 4 degrees, 57 minutes on March 8: that’s 80 percent of the way to spring! And it reaches 90 percent of the way on the 13th.

DAYBOOK FOR THE THIRD WEEK OF EARLY SPRING
March 1: Zeitgebers for this week include woodcocks arriving from the South, cardinals singing near 6:30 a.m., wild violet leaves beginning to grow when the snow melts, and woodchucks coming out of hibernation.
March 2: Pussy willows are often completely open now, a traditional signal for the end of maple syrup time in the Border States. In the North, however, the half-open pussy willows promise plenty of sap still to come, especially near new moon time on March 15.
March 3: On this date, chances for highs above 60 surge along the 40th Parallel and up into the Dakotas. If the weather is dry, put in oats or ryegrass for quick vegetative cover.
March 4: Water striders appear on the ponds, and woolly bear caterpillars come out from their winter hibernation.  Clover and wild violet leaves start to grow, and rhubarb is up four or five inches. Honeysuckle buds are unraveling on the lowest branches. Bleeding hearts are pushing their heads from the ground.
March 5: Stormy conditions with rain or snow are associated with the March 5 weather system. The day before this front arrives is typically one of the wettest days of the month.
March 6: Ducks and geese are scouting for nesting sites.
March 7: Red maples flower. Coltsfoot is budding in the mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  Azaleas and camellias are blooming in the Deep South.  In the Mid-Atlantic States, celandine has sprouted