Pond awakening, home

The first day of spring, as marked by the vernal equinox—the moment that the sun crosses the celestial equator and the hours of day and night are almost equal—won't arrive for nearly two weeks, but the first spring day... well, that's another story. If your determination is made according to temperature, spring, of course, has already arrived, when temperatures in February topped 60 degrees and the telltale flowers, aconite, hellebore, and crocus, bloomed unnaturally early. Ditto, if you prefer to use bird arrivals as your vernal marker, for the Red-winged Blackbirds, which are definitely harbingers, returned to the wetlands and started to set up shop yesterday. But my favorite indicator of a bona fide spring day is the start of frog-calling season, and today, from noon-time to 12:10 p.m.—it was over for the day that fast—the first Wood Frogs began chorusing. Their choir sounds more like the voices of annoyed ducks than typical frogs, but when I hear them for the first time in the vernal pool behind my house, I'm ready to declare that spring is here, regardless of what the calendar says.