We’ve had such crazy weather, things began to pop up in my garden earlier than normal. The red winged blackbirds were here early, too, and had to endure a few snowstorms after their arrival.

Everything seems early.

And now, a college friend, who lives about the same latitude as me and about an hour west of here, has had her first baltimore oriole visit! The males always come north first, scouting I suppose, and there he was, sitting on her feeder Easter Sunday!

I usually put up my oriole and hummingbird feeders the first week in May. But today, on the 22nd of April I went down to the basement, grabbed my oriole feeder, and filled it with grape jelly. I stood in the door to my deck, surveying my birdfeeder domain, and wondered how to rearrange things so that the oriole feeder would be prominent.

Eventually I decided to move the suet to another hook on the other side of the house and put the oriole feeder front and center, out in the sunshine where it would attract attention. I worried somewhat that the suet, being moved, wouldn’t be found by the birds who have grown dependent on it. But I figured it was almost past suet time and they should be out looking for bugs or something.

Then I sat down to write this post intending to document when I put the oriole feeder out. As I sat I glanced out a window and saw a female downy woodpecker contentedly chowing down on the suet in it’s new location.

I guess I don’t need to worry about my birds. If there’s food, they will find it. But when they’ve finished this batch of suet I’m taking that feeder down for the summer and putting the hummingbird feeder up. If the orioles are on their way the hummingbirds won’t be far behind.

Spring has, indeed, sprung.