The Early "V"

Trail Wood #29.02.09 Earl Plato

Sign of the times at Trail Wood pre-spring.
Teale wrote about that time in March.
“ Yesterday the fox sparrows. Today and the journeying Canada geese. Tomorrow and tomorrow, in the weeks when spring arrives and spring advances, we will see the vast movement of the homecoming birds-with ripples mounting into waves-flowing toward us and sweeping around us.
Like an entering wedge, this early “V” of northward-cleaving waterfowl moves in the vanguard, reversing the direction of the “geese-going days” of October. We listen to their calling grow fainter. We strain to see their diminishing forms as long as possible.
They pass on, a moving sign in the sky, certain assurance of the nearness of spring. A hundred geese were in the flock. How rapidly the news spreads this morning through the village! A little later we hear a killdeer in the sky.”
Next: memories of flocks