March Is . . .

 [Dunlin, Avalon Jetty, NJ Sunday March 17 2013. Click to enlarge photos.]

March is swirls of Dunlin and prettier ducks. . . but fewer of them. It is trickles of the new, like Laughing Gulls and Pine Warblers, and lots of the old, like Common Loons in the channels and Hooded Mergansers in the creeks. It is wind, and waiting for birds to come across the Bay, like the American Kestrel we saw come across at Cox Hall Creek yesterday. It's daffodils and bluebells poking through cold ground, and Mourning Cloaks flying above it. It is the waterthrush that is not here yet, but the Osprey that is. It's friends sharing evening fun and pizza around a poker table talking of these things, and a friend in a hospital far away who we're waiting for, too, like a spring bird we want to return. March is a hard month, hard as in difficult, and hard as in solid, unmoving, unmoved.

[Ring-billed Gull between February and April, with February's streaks and April's blood red orbital ring and gape. Waiting in a shopping center parking lot, where else, until it is time to go. ]