Some apple trees are showing pink buds / Daddy longlegs begin hatching from eggs laid late last summer / Blooming: swamp saxifrage, Mayapple, Jack in the pulpit, pussytoes / The first of perhaps three litters of northern short-tailed shrews is being born. These tiny animals have a poisonous bite and prey on mice and voles / Spring azure butterflies, silvery violet blue above, flitting through the woods signal the return of warm weather / Bobolinks begin to sing

Two-year-old beavers have left home and are searching for new house sites / Young fishers are following their mothers through the woods / Blooming: nannyberry, highbush cranberry, clintonia, and starflower / Gray tree frogs begin calling in late afternoon and will continue to deafen anyone nearby until after midnight / Hatching of blackflies, for the 180 millionth time. They’ve been around since the mid-Jurassic / Painted trillium is blooming in conifer woods

Snowshoe hare have switched to a summer diet of clovers, grasses, ferns, and the young leaves of alders and birches / Filamentous bacteria called actinomycetes give soil the wonderful earthy smell that wafts up as you prepare the garden for planting / Grouse mothers make a variety of clicking and whining noises if they are disturbed with their chicks, now about four weeks old / Trembling and big-toothed aspen seeds are ripe and being carried by the wind