Butterbutt, Assekonk

On today's task list was a return visit to the Assekonk Swamp trails to determine what I might need to point out to the Wheeler Middle School sixth-grade biology classes I'll be, in a couple of days, leading on environmental education field walks. There were the usual suspects: Spicebush shrubs in full bloom, emerging fern fiddleheads, sedge flowers, and a host of invasive species that will help me clothe our observations in an Earth Day theme. But if the Lord is good to us—wait... the mere fact that I'm still being asked to lead these walks is a blessing (and my recent discoveries are certainly a sign that God retains a favorable impression of the naturalist)—then we'll be graced with the same kind of sighting I got in a shrub thicket by the Assekonk dam and bridge, an area we always explore. There was a commotion in the underbrush by the spillway stream, and when I got the Sigma supertelephoto focused on the commotioners, I spotted a splendidly colorful sight: at least a quartet of Yellow-rumped Warblers, each in their spring-plumage finery, hunting insects. These might be the very same birds, each then clad in cold-season drab, that I spotted eating Poison Ivy berries along the winter beaches, or they might be simply migrating through here, en route to the boreal forests of Canada. In any event, they're dazzlers, and with God's continuing blessing, rain will remain out of the forecast and the students will get good looks at the "Butterbutt" show.