The woodcock are coming north; Dinah and I have been out in the evening looking for them. Last night wasn’t too productive – I bumped one, she bumped (stopped to flush, though) a double, and we finished the night with a hard point and steady to wing on a single. Wednesday night was a lot better – we moved over a dozen birds. Regardless, it’s a great time to be in the fields, swamps and pondsides. A short list of things that caught my attention:

a raft of ring-necked ducks with a male hooded merganser tucked in the center

a trio of mallards deep in some flooded puckerbrush

pterodactyls nesting

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the wintergreen smell of birch sap

the cinderblock splash of a beaver sounding the alarm

the smell of sweet fern and the sound of gravel underfoot

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the clink-tinkle of Dinah’s bell

spring peepers starting the evening chorus

no bugs yet!