Spring has come to the farm! Most of the flowers aren’t blooming yet, but the birds are coming back, and the over-wintering butterflies are out. It’s so nice to come back and find that spring has begun.

I saw most of the butterflies that over winter as adults in this area – Mourning Cloaks, Commas, Comptons Tortoiseshells, and Milbert’s Tortoiseshells. Here’s a
Milbert’s Tortoiseshell basking in the sun.

And there were lots of Infants – small early spring day-flying moths – fluttering up from wet places on the paths.

I spent a lot of time this week on my annual quest to find Pasqueflowers on one of our remnant prairies. I haven’t found any yet, and it’s a little early for most of the other flowers. But I did find one plant in flower – a new one for the farm – a tiny plant in the mustard family that grows on the sandy bluff prairie remnants. It’s called Common Whitlow-grass (Draba reptans) although it’s a mustard, not a grass. It’s very small – only an inch or two high. The first day I walked I found some plants with buds but no flowers.

But the next day it was 75 degrees and they were blooming.

There were lots of new birds for the year this week. I saw the first Yellow-rumped Warblers, Turkey Vultures, Field Sparrow, Northern Flickers, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and Woodcocks. The Woodcocks are doing their annual mating dance out in the wetland. I like to walk out there at dusk and sit on the driveway and watch. One night there was one male dancing, and the next night there were two.

Just as it was getting really dark I heard a wolf howl back in the valley beyond the house. It’s the first time we’ve heard a wolf on our land. They’re fairly common in northern Wisconsin, and there’s a small population east of us, in central Wisconsin, but none that anyone knows about near us. Our friends down the road had seen one a few weeks ago, and this confirmed that they really are around. There are lots of woods and plenty of deer, so I hope they stay.

I found 4 “sheds” this week – the antlers that deer shed every year in the spring. People around here like finding them, and I’ve looked but never found any before. If you find them soon after they’ve been shed, they’re in good shape. Later on mice and other small animals gnaw on them and they aren’t as smooth and perfect.

The spring frogs have started calling – Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers. There are Wood Frogs at our pond and our neighbor’s pond, and in the beaver ponds in the creek. They make a wonderful sound – like a lot of ducks chuckling and chattering together. I sat at the edge of our neighbor’s pond and watched and listened to them – and got a few photos. The frogs float quietly on the surface of the water and inflate the two vocal sacs at the sides of their throats to give their call. Once a Phoebe flew over the pond – chasing insects – and the frogs all disappeared into the water at once.

Here’s one frog floating and watching me.

And here are about a hundred of them floating on the surface of the pond. Each of the little dark spots on the surface of the water is a frog.

I was looking hard for green things in the woods – I didn’t find any early flowers, but I did find some Ground Pine (Lycopodium lucidulum). It stays green all year around, but it’s still nice to see it poking out between the brown leaves.

I found several big new animal dens. One in Buffalo Ridge Prairie.

And one right in the middle of the little hillside that I had cleared on Fallen Oak Point.

I’d like to be able to find out what kinds of animals live in them.

I found about a dozen Scarlet Cup Fungi – a fungus that fruits in the spring – in one of our wooded valleys.

Another spring adventure involved cleaning out one of the bird nesting boxes that I made a few years ago. I made it hoping to attract Northern Flickers – I see lots of them migrating through, but not many during the nesting season. I packed it full of sawdust – Flickers like to be able to hollow out their own space, and the sawdust also keeps out other critters. It stayed unoccupied for a few years, and then last year the squirrels pulled the sawdust out, and this spring I started seeing a squirrel poking it’s head out of the hole. So I thought I would clean it out again and mount it in a new spot in time for the Flickers to find it. I unfastened the box from the tree, and as it hit the ground I heard shrill squealing. Inside was a family of baby squirrels – with no hair and their eyes still closed. So I remounted the box for them – I’ll have to wait until next year to try attracting Flickers.