MARCH IDES: It may be snowing and blowing outside, but the
calendar is on our side; so, too are our readers who continue to
see sure – and some pretty unusual – signs of spring.
Chad York of Gates Hollow saw a bear in the wee hours of
Wednesday morning, wreaking havoc among the bins in his driveway.
Aren’t bears hibernating this time of year?
That was our question, too.
And ditto for a Wednesday afternoon report from Shirley
Swartzlander of Lafayette who had just grabbed a caterpillar off
her porch – with snow all around! Aren’t they supposed to be in
their cocoons at this time of year?
It was the first caterpillar she has ever seen in winter, and
the inch-long crawler was definitely alive and moving around. From
head to tail, its colors were black, brown, black. (Perhaps it was
a woolly bear caterpillar that made the wrong call last year.)
In any case, Shirley was wondering what to feed her unexpected
guest. Leaves? Lettuce? A couple trillion lady bugs?
We didn’t know what to tell her but hoped our readers would.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, we also had a caller report seeing an
American bald eagle outside of Shinglehouse and heading toward
Olean, N.Y., the day before.
We also had a preliminary report Thursday that the turkey
buzzards have returned to their roost in Westline – exactly on the
day they were expected, the Ides of March
Earlier this week, we heard from Tony Barnish: “With all the
sights and sounds of spring, we wanted to share what happened
today. We also have seen the geese and ducks and robins, but we
also had another visitor. We had about 100-125 sea gulls land in
our front yard.”
“They were white with grayish wings and they made a heck of a
racket. They seemed to form a pack out in the yard and stuck close
together. Among them was ducks and geese as well. They will
probably leave soon and head for the Great Lakes somewhere, but
it’s always nice to have them pit here in our front yard!”
Even last week – Friday, to be exact – we had a report of more
robins in the area. Rhonda Gray of Lincolndale Road phoned to tell
us she and her daughter, 4-year-old Salamanca, had seen about eight
robins in their yard that morning.
