Well, the grass is ris

‘Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonder where the birdies is?’— AnonymousNever mind robins. It is not officially spring until the grackles are dancing outside my window. They strut around with their heads thrown back, challenging each other. I guess whoever can stretch his head back the farthest is the winner. Grackles, a mediumish-sized blackish-purpleish bird, arrive in force about this time. They do not have a song. It is rather more of a squawk. They seem to be eating seeds and are muscling out the smaller, more colorful birds for now. I forgive them. They will eventually subside into the landscape as the season wears on. Colorful birds are overrated. It’s not like they actually do anything to earn their colors.Robins arrive too early. How many of us have seen them hopping around in the middle of a spring snowstorm looking for worms? The worms aren’t up yet, dummies. It is too early. I do not know if they eat anything else. All I ever see them doing is catching worms. How do they get by without them? Indeed, some robins have actually become year-round residents, but what are the little carnivores eating? McDonald’s?We also have a couple of orioles that move into the neighborhood about this time. These are the ones that make that little bag o’ birds that hangs from the trees. Weaving is a mystery to me (Actually a lot of things are a mystery to me. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered to look things up.). When I was a youngster at church camp, I could never get my plastic-weave key chain to stay together long enough to get it home.There is another sure sign of spring: my dog getting skunked. Somebody told me that this is the time of year when the mama skunk kicks the papa skunk out of the den. He must then wander about looking for a new place to live, and my dog, while not objecting to skunks in general, just does not want them in his neighborhood. Although dogs are the seventh on the list of most intelligent species (dolphins and monkeys are higher up and humans refuse to participate), this is one lesson they never seem to learn. I had one dog that was skunked every year of his life, sometimes more than once.In a way I don’t get why everyone is so excited about the spring arrivals. Talk about your fair weather friends. I’m stickin’ with my good old dependable crows and blue jays. You don’t see them running off to Florida just because of a little snow. I think they also refuse to participate in that intelligence list thing. Bill Abrams resides, and watches birds, in Pine Plains.