David Stanwood, musician extraordinaire, recently made two astute observations; a recording and research on fish crows. He noticed “a procession of hundreds, maybe thousands of crows flying over our house and over Hoft Farm front field towards Long View.” David thought he heard what he noted was something “fishy,” so he made a recording of the call of the migrating crows.

p>The bird sightings have been fast and furious. Spring is definitely on its way.

Flip Harrington and I always plan an escape from March madness and find a good birding area to visit. This year we were glad not to be on-Island after reading the Gazette issues we missed, madness hit the Vineyard with a vengeance this March.

Black-capped chickadees are singing frequently now, and it is a welcome sound of spring. Their song is a clearly whistled feee-beee. Chickadee song on the Vineyard is unique, as both notes are sung on the same pitch; almost everywhere else the second of these two notes is at a lower pitch than the first note. The chick-a-dee-dee-dee that we hear frequently is their call note rather than a song.

By now, anyone who has listened to a weather report in the last couple of weeks knows that since December this has been one of the warmest winters on record. Tuesday was technically the first day of spring, but it seems that here on the Island, spring began to arrive about two to three weeks ago. The painted turtles in my pond thought so. The first ones emerged on March 15, which is nearly three weeks earlier than at any time since 2004. And on March 19 a cabbage white butterfly was at Tisbury Meadow. While this species first emerged on the mainland in warm weather a couple of weeks ago, this is one of the earliest appearances known for Martha’s Vineyard.

The Winter That Wasn’t is merging into a spring whose nature has yet to be revealed and birds, accordingly, are in motion. Most notably, common grackles and red-winged blackbirds have landed on the Island, raucous males (as always) leading the charge but with the first females of both species arriving over the past week. Meanwhile, more species and more individuals are lending their voices to the morning chorus, with cardinals, Eastern bluebirds, American robins, and brown creepers singing this week at multiple locations. Every day brings change.