Inventor's Notes

Happy Adirondack Mother's Day! Here are just a sampling of the many wildflowers coming into born just for Mother's Day!

While spring migration in the Adirondacks begins as a trickle in March and then grows through April, May is marked on the calendar of every birdwatcher in the North Country. They have waited through the cold and often quiet winter for this time of year when a windfall of migratory landbirds arrive enmass to the Adirondacks. Birds suddenly fill the woods and yards, just as they fill birders with joy. Many of these species will stay and breed for the summer, while others just pass through briefly.

After a morning of fishing or enjoying many of the Adirondack waterways, take a stop at John Brown Farm State Historic Site for John Brown Day. The John Brown Farm State Historic Site is hosting the annual John Brown Live! Day celebrating the abolitionists John Brown and Frederick Douglass.

While singing birds and budding trees are what many people think of when they list the signs of spring, it may be the amphibians that give us the best glimpse of the life that is about to burst upon the landscape. As snow melts with warming temperatures and spring rains soak into the ground, amphibians emerge after a long winter holed up beneath the ground.

My friend Sean and I went out one crisp April Adirondack night in search of owls. Owls as a rule breed earlier than most birds, allowing them to take advantage of young rodents and other prey items in spring when the owls themselves have young or when their young are recently fledged and learning to hunt for themselves.