A week ago, my good friend Jim Hunt, of Milroy, mentioned, “I saw my first two robins this week.”

Hearing the report, I have again prepared myself for the annual telephone and email deluge of “robin spotters.” They will be heralding the arrival of the harbingers of spring; birds bringing our area immediate relief from winter with a deluge of warm weather.

Jim was not so easily swayed and said, “Just because a couple of robins show up doesn’t mean we are done with winter.”

Jim is a smart man!

Flocks of robins do migrate south, mainly to Florida in the fall. But among the long-distance travelers, there are always some feathered slackers who stay behind and spend winter out of sight, huddled under creek banks and other out-of-the-way locations. The slacker robins are the first to “suddenly appear” and put the general population into a meteorological tither, proclaiming the end of winter and fair weather to immediately follow.

My response is a polite but firm, “bah humbug.”

Most of the fair weather, early response robin watchers also take great stock on Feb. 2 with the early morning shenanigans of a hibernating rodent. Grumpy and groggy when grabbed by a tuxedo clad, top hat wearing Punxsutawney weather aficionado, the groundhog is ceremonially flopped on the ground. The cameras are fixed, film is rolling and the masses scrutinize the poor creature’s every move to see if it spots its own shadow.

I’ve come to the conclusion, the Punxsutawney shenanigans have more to do with getting together to eat a monstrous breakfast with mountains of biscuits and gravy, and then set about to do some serious day drinking.

If one checks the calendar, spring arrives on March 19 or 47 days following the meteorological, Marmot-based crap shoot in Pennsylvania. Doing a little simple division, the date is approximately 6.7 weeks away from Feb. 2. Regardless of the marmot’s shadowing sighting, the much more reliable method using the calendar indicates shadow or no… we still have slightly more than six weeks of winter left.

A much better indicator of impending warmth is the lowly buzzard. Nature’s high flying sanitation engineer only shows up with favorable warm winds. A little shared but known fact is the buzzard avoids freezing weather because it is unable to eat frozen carcasses. No ‘possum popsicles or frozen raccoon as the buzzard doesn’t have the style of beak and claws needed to chow down on frozen victuals.

Notice, I said buzzards will show up with favorable warm winds. In my lifetime, I have seen buzzards in Rush County every month of the year. Buzzards are opportunists and will come and go with wintertime weather warm fronts. November, December, January, February and March are all months I’ve witnessed buzzards in Rush County.

If the buzzards come north with a warm front, they will just as quickly go back south if the weather turns off cold and freezing carcasses return.

The proven fact of nature meets some often stern opposition when one crosses the state line into neighboring Ohio and descends on the town of Hinckley. The Hinckleyites have ascribed March 15 as the unwavering date when the buzzards return to the Hinckley area buzzard roost.

Again, I think the day may bring a celebration based on a huge early breakfast followed by the masses imbibing in day drinking, similar to the Punxsutawney groundhog bunch.

One indicator of lingering cold weather is the little dark-eyed Junco. The little rascals are known as “snow birds.” They migrate down from the Arctic in November and will stay in the Midwest until the middle or late part of March.

Sorry folks, I just looked at my bird feeder and the dark-eyed Juncos are still here.

Hoosier anglers Midwest Walleye Challenge

Indiana anglers are invited to participate in the 2024 Midwest Walleye Challenge, a virtual fishing tournament offering the opportunity to win prizes and contribute to fisheries management while providing Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) fisheries biologists with valuable data on the state’s walleye, sauger and saugeye populations.

The tournament begins March 30 and ends June 30. Only catches of walleye, sauger and saugeye will count in the tournament.

The Midwest Walleye Challenge was piloted in Iowa during the past two years. This year it will be offered across the Midwest as part of a larger fisheries research project funded by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

There is both a free and a $25 paid option to enter the tournament, with biweekly cash prizes available for paid participants and noncash prizes available for free entrants. All participants will have a chance to win a grand prize at the end of the tournament.

Anglers will be able to submit catches and their time on the water for multiple categories, including a “Tough Luck” category for individuals who log fishing trips but don’t catch anything, a “Most Waterbodies Fished” category for individuals who log trips from multiple rivers, lakes, and streams, and a standard “Longest Fish” category, in addition to random prize drawings for everyone who takes part.

Participants will use the free mobile app, MyCatch, to submit photos of their catch on a measuring device so length and species can be determined. Once the photo is reviewed, and the catch is confirmed, it will appear on a live leaderboard so anglers may see their current ranking in the tournament.

Anglers interested in participating may view the rules and register for the tournament by visiting AnglersAtlas.com/event/769 or by using the MyCatch app.  For more information, visit on.IN.gov/walleye.

Readers can contact the author by writing to this publication, or e-mail at jackspaulding@hughes.net. Spaulding’s books, “The Best Of Spaulding Outdoors” and “The Coon Hunter And The Kid,” are available from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle download.