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.

One of the best ways to support conservation education on Martha’s Vineyard is about to happen just as you are reading this. The statewide Birdathon begins at 6 p.m. today and runs until the same hour tomorrow. A number of teams will fan out all over the state, but the one that matters to us is the Felix Neck team. Groups will search the Island to find as many species of birds as they can. Anyone can support their efforts by pledging a certain amount per species found. Last year a new record was set of 132 species, but if the weather is favorable we could do even better this year. Pledges can be any amount, from a nickel or dime per species to a dollar or so for those feeling generous. Any amount is welcome. And to make it easy, you can call Felix Neck at 508-627-4850 and leave your pledge, or even easier for many, go online to firstgiving.com/fundraiser/suzan-bellincampi/1/team and make your pledge there. This is a great way to support our own local Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and its fine programs. Get involved. Give those field observers an incentive to work even harder. Call or go online today.

T. S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” and he was right about the first part of April if you are a birder. In short, lots of winter birds have begun to leave or have left, and few of our summer residents have arrived. In part, the slow arrival of many breeding species has to do with the ocean. Its water is still colder than the land, in the low 40s. Thus any breeze flowing over it drops the temperature on the Island, whereas 40 miles inland the first leaves are beginning to come out in sheltered spots. Out here there are frost bottoms in the state forest where leaves do not appear until mid-June, and occasionally some rhododendrons are still in bloom for the Fourth of July.

This is the start of the quiet time for wildlife on the Vineyard. Fall migration is essentially over, with the possible exception of a few hawks that got a late start. Most of the hardy species that usually winter here in small numbers have retired to thickets and swampy places. This group includes birds like hermit thrushes, rufous-sided towhees, a few field and chipping sparrows, white-throated sparrows that nest much further north, and some slate-colored juncos. They will survive on natural seeds and berries from poison ivy, bayberry, bittersweet, winterberry, holly and an occasional crabapple. Cedar waxwings, robins and eastern bluebirds also are still around in small groups. Later in the winter, more of these three species may arrive from the Cape if they run out of food over there, making it look like an early spring influx.

Don’t look now but those large gray and white geese out in a field near you may not all be Canada geese. It is worth checking through those flocks carefully just now. The reason is that several unusual but similar species have appeared in our region recently that are most likely to be found mixed in with the Canadas. A greater white-fronted goose has been seen on Nantucket within the last week. This western and Midwestern species has been found here five times, the last record in 1995. More surprising, a pink-footed goose which nests from eastern Greenland eastward into Europe, was seen on the Cape a few days ago, apparently the first Massachusetts occurrence of the wild bird. To top that off, a flock of 24 cackling geese was seen at Salt Pond in Falmouth within the week, in easy sight of West Chop. This species looks like a miniature Canada goose, not much larger than a mallard, also from the west. The most recent issue of North American Birds, published by the American Birding Association, has a fine article on how to distinguish the three races of cackling goose: Ridgways, Aleutian and Richardson’s. We know of only two records for this species here, in 1958 and 1987. I’ll settle for any of the three forms. And while on the subject of possible vagrant goose species, it should be remembered that barnacle goose, another wanderer from Greenland and Europe, turned up in both Rhode Island last winter and other years in Massachusetts. While we seldom see geese arriving here from the Cape, the recent spate of very cold weather may be just the kind of conditions that would prompt their doing so.