spring at last

sunrise:  5:41am

It's been an arduous winter, even for those of us who love winter here in Maine.  A few persistent patches of snow are clinging to the north side of trees, but spring has asserted itself pretty definitively now.

Although I've been outside at dawn once or twice in the last several months, I have been slacking off on blog entries.  Today, however, birdsong and early light tantalized me so insistently that I had to go outside and be in it.  Cedar waxwings, cardinals, song sparrows, crows, chickadees, robins, and the ubiquitous red-winged blackbirds produced the theme music to the scenes I'll share with you below.  Plus, I stood rapt by the haunting, echoey tunes of a hermit thrush back by the wooded hill behind our fields, though I couldn't find the singer himself.

I had my first spotting of our resident mallard pair this morning, just beyond this chair in the runoff stream that flows out of the pond.

Kate - the all-season retriever

Guster enjoying a vigorous roll on the grass, after 6 months of snow cover.

Sunlight tips the treetops before I can see the sun itself...

Here it comes!