False spring

The sap started to flow at the end of January, so my son and I trudged out over the unfrozen ground to set two spiles in the old maple tree. We watched as it welled at the spout and heard the first drops ring in each galvanized pail. It was a moment of certainty in an otherwise uncertain season, where winter had failed to impress and spring seemed just around the corner.

False springs are not uncommon, and this one proved no different. We had about five days of decent flow, and I sugared off about 3 and a half gallons of sap to produce 11 ounces of syrup. Then it stopped, and suddenly we had snow covering the premature tips of the backyard daffodils and subzero nights that up on Canaan Mountain set a record low of -19°F for Valentine’s Day in Norfolk, true to its moniker the “icebox of Connecticut.”

Here it is a few days later, and we now have temperatures nearing 50°F, so I have reset the pails on the maple tree. Wild temperature fluctuations like these are part of the seasonal package in this part of New England, though it can be jarring to expectations. It unsettles me in much the same way that I am puzzled by overwintering bluebirds, since the insects that comprise their primary diet are now in short supply. Bluebirds will also eat berries, though, and they appreciate the suet I provide, even though their feet are poorly adapted for clinging to the wire feeders. I’ve seen them hover with beating wings to snatch a morsel, but they do better when a woodpecker is gouging out its fill and pieces fall to the ground, where the bluebirds eagerly retrieve them.

Adaptation is one of the great marvels of evolution. Some species are tremendously hardy, and other others have poor tolerance for even a small shift outside the normal range of variation. Some have traits that allowed them to thrive under conditions driven by the same, predictable variables, only to have these same adaptations spell their downfall when a radically different factor changes the equation. The passenger pigeons that overwhelmed their predators by massing in their millions were easy marks for hunters with shotguns, hunted to oblivion in just a few short decades.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at www.greensleeves.typepad.com.