The warm-blooded skunk cabbage is the first to shrug off the winter leaves.

Vernal pools are alive with arthropods.  The midges, with their innocent, feathery antennae, swarm from the earth at my every step.

A mourning cloak emerges faded from hibernation and basks on a sunny rock.

I startle a pair of blue jays from an apple thicket and they fly off -- oddly silent.  

Do jays fall mute at nesting time?

The hawks are not quiet -- a red-tailed screams at me in annoyance and rides the wind away to the south.