Things to Look for in March

Putting together this post, I'm reminded how much I love this time of year. The sap is running and the earth is waking up and breaking out into flower. What have you been seeing lately?

Photo credit: Carly & Art

Bloodroot is one of our favorite spring flowers. Each plant blooms only briefly, and there's a window of only a few weeks that the bloodroots bloom at all. It's one more thing that inspires us to spend as much time as possible in the woods at this time of year.

Photo credit: PIWO

Every year we look for the cheery flowers of the
spicebush as they emerge to light up the understory. It's common throughout our local forests.

Photo credit: PIWO

Spring Beauties are not a showy flower, but we find them dainty and adorable. They're one of the first spring ephemerals: perennial flowers that emerge every spring on the forest floor, and they last a little longer than most.

Photo credit: bcfoto70

I love to watch yellow-bellied sapsuckers as they feed: they make a series of round holes in a tree's bark, then lap up the sap that comes out -- and the insects that are attracted to it. The yellow-bellied sapsucker is considered a "keystone" species by some ecologists because so many other birds rely on them, following along for their leftovers.