A cardinal in the back woodlot sang at 7:12 this morning, crows right behind him. Starlings were all around downtown when I went to get the newspaper at 8:30. Out in the country, the morning horizon was hazy with spring. The roadsides and pastures were almost free of snow, but the wooded areas held on to their cold. In the afternoon at 4:00, temperature of 45 degrees, the sky robin’s egg blue, I listened to crows and peeping robins and a pileated woodpecker. The frozen river had softened to