SPENCERVILLE — With three weeks to go until spring, we’re starting to see some signs that winter is almost over.
On Sunday, the Johnny Appleseed Metropolitan Park District hosted a Signs of Spring Nature Hike at Kendrick Woods.
A group of more than 20 hikers trudged through the woods looking for, well, signs of spring.
“One of the main reasons we’re out here at Kendrick Woods at this time of year is to find a plant called skunk cabbage. It’s the earliest blooming wildflower, but it doesn’t necessarily look like a wildflower. It’s teardrop shaped, almost like a Hershey Kiss, a deep purple mottled color, coming out of a wet swampy ground. It doesn’t look showy like a flower but technically it is. It doesn’t smell nice like a flower, instead it smells kind of rotting and it doesn’t smell very nice but that’s because with that purple color and that smell it’s attracting animals that would be attracted to carrion,” said Dan Hodges, naturalist for the park district.
Getting to see skunk cabbage proved difficult as the south trail at Kendrick Woods that leads to the skunk cabbage was flooded but they were able to observe buds on trees start to enlarge and observe birds that usually show up in early spring.
“My personal harbinger of spring is the red-wing blackbird. They are ones where the young males will come as early as they can and sometimes they come too early, to their own detriment, but red-wing blackbirds come back into town and set up territories and try and protect themselves,” he said.
“Vultures are kind of fair-weather friends, so they’ll move up when the weather’s warm enough to eat off a carcass. If it gets cold, they might skip out of town a little bit. There are other birds too that are flying through. Everybody’s excited to be a little bit warmer. Things are starting to sing. I hear a cardinal as we’re talking, and robins are kind of coming out and starting to sing, so everything kind of wants winter to be over and we’re just waiting for that to be official,” Hodges added.
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