11 year old Amy is like most kids who by February anxiously looks forward to the coming spring with visions of riding her bike, playing at green parks, and exploring and discovering new birds and insects and flowers in the fields and woodlands near her home.

I point out to Amy that famous naturalists like John Burroughs and Thoreau and Rachel Carson have said that the change to spring does not occur on a set calendar date but occurs gradually, in day to day increments. If we look closely we can set them starting already in February and March.

The first change Amy has already noticed is that each morning the light comes into her room earlier and earlier. I explained to her that since the winter solstice in December the earth is slowly tilting towards the sun again, which brings us longer days. This will keep happening until the longest day in June, which is our summer solstice. This tilt makes the sun seem as if it is moving towards the north again, and is what brings us our warmer weather in spring and summer.

When Amy walks in the meadows near her home she sometimes looks at the buds on the winter trees that have lost their leaves. Each tree has a unique bud with a hard scale on it. The different woodland trees can be identified by the types of winter buds and by the leaf scars left when last seasons leaf fell to the ground. Beneath the winter bud is next year's young leaf, waiting, like Amy, for the warm days of spring.

In the spring Amy likes to search for bird nests and look for animal babies of skunks and raccons and deer and foxes. One spring she spied a mother skunk moving her little baby to a new home. If Amy is luck and especially quiet she will see round faced foxes babies watch near their den, looking at her with curious big round eyes. I told Amy that already I have seen that the foxes are digging out their dens, preparing for their new family which will come in early spring.

Amy knows that the foxes grows a thick underfur to get them through the cold winter. I told her that some birds grow more feathers to keep them warm in the winter, particarlly the birds that don't migrate south, like chickadees and marsh sparrows. On the coldest days they fluff out their feathers to trap more warm air close to their body. Amy likes to put food out in her feeder and help her bird friends through the coldest days of winter. One year a red cardinal came to her feeder, which is unusual where we live.

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