It occurs one dawn, quite beyond our human planning. Open the window or the door, or walk down the street, and you’ll hear it in a way that was absent the week before – birdsong. This isn’t the twitter of the hardy chickadees and juncos that have wintered here through the deep snows and sub-zero freezing temperatures, welcome as those sounds are each day. This is the chatter and song that fill the woods or the city park, turning what was much quieter into a natural amphitheater. It’s one of the early and sure signs of the coming spring.

For anyone who watches closely and delights in how the seasons change, March is never a predictable plot. In the Northeast, even as the snow is melting inch by inch, the March temperatures zig and zag above and below freezing. The icy cold of a couple March mornings is enough to remind us that winter changes into spring on the seasonal cycle’s own time, not by our calendars. Still, the Northern Hemisphere’s lengthening daylight is unmistakable. The migrating birds have arrived and miraculously, to this human eye, found their precise locations of the spring before. Not to worry, they tweet at dawn, spring, spring, spring is on its way.

A house sparrow chirping from a birdhouse heralds spring.

Each of us has the early signals of spring that she or he feels, sees, smells, hears, or touches. They greet us as warmly as old friends. Some house sparrows return to a yard for the first time since last autumn. They are not known to migrate far, especially compared to other birds, but where did they spend the winter, I wonder? The melodies of song sparrows enliven daybreak. Friends speak of fields and lots nearby that are suddenly full of birdsong in the early morning. The snow melts away in a bed to reveal the delicate, white snowdrops growing, another happily reports. Across a pond, a few weeping willows have quickened into a deep golden yellow that presages the bright colors that will flourish in the surrounding trees soon. A warm day brings the smell of earth coming to life. The brooks gush and gurgle from the snow melt, full of the water that will replenish and sustain the new growth to come.

Even for a winter lover, the early signs of spring coming are not only welcome but affirming of life’s constant and mysterious cycles and renewal. We humans have our own rituals and migration patterns, attuned to the warmth and growth around us. Soon, the sidewalk cafes will be full and more musicians will be on the city corners. Gardeners will get their hands in the dirt softened by the coming warm days. Yet this is March, not April or May, and those days wait. This is March, a time of promise and the vitality we feel in each day’s subtle but sure signs. Even when we momentarily forget or focus on the prediction of a snowstorm, the insistent songs of daybreak tell us so.

Spring Watching

Mindfulwalker.com plans to explore and chronicle various signs periodically as winter gives way and spring unfolds. You can also follow spring’s progression, migrating birds and other sightings, and seasonal change in an Internet project for students and adults, Journey North. Do you have favorite signs and natural occurrences as spring arrives week by week where you live? If so, share them here.

A weeping willow’s showy golden yellow foretells the color to come.

A brook gushes with waters from the winter’s snowfalls.