March is often called a fickle month as winter tries to hang on while spring is anxious to get underway. Spring, of course, always wins out in this tug-of-war between the seasons.
With spring on the way — it starts on March 20 — the days are rapidly getting brighter: By March 31, the sun will rise nearly an hour earlier than it did on March 1. The lengthening daylight means daylight saving time, which begins on Sunday, March 9. Set your clocks ahead by an hour.
Windy days also are in store — good for kite flying. With the sun rapidly heating up the Earth’s surface, pockets of warm air form during March. The warm air moves northward toward the cold, dense arctic air flowing southward. When the warm air and cold air masses meet, they create differing pressures, which, in turn, create strong winds.
For us bird lovers, March has another distinction — a swift revving up of spring migration, one of nature’s most glorious events. Between now and early May, countless numbers of birds will be returning from winter homes in the southern tropics to nesting grounds in North America.
Actually, the first real signs of spring migration came in February, when high-flying flocks of northbound sandhill cranes began flying over Georgia, going back to breeding grounds up north and in the Midwest. The first waves of purple martins, returning from South America, also appeared.
But this month, you can expect many more arriving migrants, such as tree swallows, blue-gray gnatcatchers, orchard orioles, Northern parulas, Louisiana water thrushes, yellow-throated warblers and others. Whip-poor-wills might start calling across North Georgia. By late March, ruby-throated hummingbirds will be coming in.
The great northward flood of warblers, tanagers and other migratory songbirds, however, will arrive in April and May. They’ll join our year-round birds — bluebirds, cardinals, Carolina wrens and the like — to fill Georgia’s fields and forests with color, song and baby birds.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be full on Friday, March 14. A total lunar eclipse will occur on Thursday, March 13, beginning at 1:09 a.m. and ending at 4:48 a.m. As darkness falls, three planets are visible — Mercury, low in the west; Mars, high in the west (and near the moon March 7); Jupiter, in the west.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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