Bright red dripping from his breast like blood, crisp black head, back and wings with white bars outlining a white belly, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak at our feeder on April 24, the earliest ever, presented the sharpest image of anything I had seen in almost six weeks.

Especially because of bird migration, but also because of wildflowers, tiny green leaves and butterflies, spring is my favorite season here in the Big Woods of southeast Minnesota. This year during the first week of March, I saw a few migrants-two Fox Sparrows, a few Song Sparrows and if you can call them migrants, a flock of robins and a flock of Cedar Waxwings. Then everything went dark for me until the end of the month when each morning I woke up, not to the sounds and sights of spring birds, but to a window facing a brick wall on the rehabilitation unit of St. Mary’s hospital in Rochester.

Read the rest of the Nancy's column in our June issue...