By LYNNE IRONS

I do not use an alarm clock. For some reason I wake up at the first crack of light. This fact makes daylight saving time particularly irksome. I don’t believe I have ever been fond of it, especially now that it happens sooner every spring and later in the fall. As a child I remember it happening at the end of April and the beginning of October. Then there was that short period of time during the Nixon administration when he tried to make a two-hour change?

It was a whirlwind getting ready to leave. On the way to pick up Pat Hughes and Hal Minis, we met Merrily Tuck and her husband, Tickles, for lunch in Ft. Lauderdale. Pat and Hal came in from Puerto Rico where they had been visiting Pat’s father, John Hughes, and combined a bit of birding and swimming with a good dose of golf. Between packing we took Pat and Hal “out west” ­— which, on Florida’s east coast, means west of Interstate 95 — for an introduction to Florida birding.

Once the Christmas Bird Count has come and gone, memorable birding experiences can be hard to come by in the dead of winter. What tops the list for me is the avian activity that conveniently takes place right outside my kitchen window at the bird feeders. The number of birds using my feeders this winter is way down. It took me a while to catch on, but the reason eventually became clear. In past years a marauding Cooper’s hawk has been the culprit — sometimes a beautiful adult with blue-gray plumage, and sometimes a brown-backed youngster. Their stealth tactics are worthy of awe and their speed a little frightening.