It was a good day for a morning walk through the UW-Madison arboretum. It started out cold, with temps in the forties, but a clear, sunny sky quickly warmed everything and by the time I left, about two hours after I arrived, temps were in the fifties. Very pleasant weather for a long, slow stroll through the woods.

I brought my binoculars with me today, and a good thing I did because all the birds were out flitting around, or knocking holes in the trees looking for bugs, or paddling through the waters of the ponds swollen with spring runoff. I got to within a dozen feet of a blue-winged teal, a kind of duck I had never seen before, and watched him root through the muck at the bottom of a small pond for about ten minutes.

Although there is still a lot of dead, brown grass everywhere and the trees are still almost all completely leafless, there’s a lot of green growth pushing its way to the surface now, which made my heart very light. I love this time of year so much. Looking forward to it is what keeps my spirits up through the longest, coldest winter.