Recognizing Spring in Exeter
The first Sunday of spring term, 50-degree temperatures and fair skies graced the Exeter campus. The ice sheets on Squamscott river subsided and a robin flew over Bancroft Hall. Exonians embraced this transitional weather as they set up Spikeball nets on the South side quad and finished reading assignments on the benches outside of their dormitories. “It’s still sweatshirt season, but it’s sweatshirt, no jacket, season,” said senior Isadora Kron during her stroll along Swasey Parkway with friends.
With last week’s vernal equinox, the Northern Hemisphere officially entered spring. Besides astronomical cues and Exeter spring traditions (dorm teas, senior meditations, Thursday afternoon trips to the farmer’s market, etc.), here are some more inconspicuous natural changes to inaugurate this year’s springtide.
Fresh Tracks in the Exeter Woods
Embark on an expedition through the Phillips Exeter Academy Woods while there is still snow on the trails. Snow is an immaculate canvas for fauna footprints, and it creates a time-stamp for the creatures rustling from their winter torpor. Some common tracks in the woods are those of raccoons (identifiable by five long, splayed toes with small sharp punctures from their claws), woodpeckers (with two toes pointing backwards and two forward), the small half-inch by half-inch handprints of squirrels and the deer hoof prints like upside-down hearts.
Vernal Pools
If, by the time you set foot into the woods, the snow has melted away, there is another springtime hallmark left in the wake of the melted snow—vernal pools. Fed by spring rainfall and the water left behind by the winter snow, vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that evaporate by mid-summer. Until then, the miniature ponds are fertile nesting grounds for various amphibians such as the spring peeper (a small chorus frog common in Eastern United States and Canada), wood frogs and salamanders. These amphibians are often frozen frigid throughout the winter—“frog-sicles” according to Biology Instructor Christopher Matlack—but defrost as temperatures rise. Once fully thawed, female amphibians must search for a safe place to deposit their eggs. The vernal pools offer a sanctuary for their defenseless spawn, since predatory fish do not occupy the pools, and the environment remains moist for months, long enough for the eggs to hatch and the young to mature.
Flora on Campus
Perhaps the most noticeable indicator of spring is the blossoming of various flora around the Academy grounds. There are daffodils near Phillips Church, morning glories behind Webster Hall, crocuses on the faculty side of Wentworth Hall and the voluminous, photogenic dammans shrub in front of Kirtland House, just to note a few exceptionally floral areas on campus. History Instructor Meg Foley’s advisees enjoy plucking fading marigolds, yarrow and camellias from the flower bed in her front yard. They arrange the buds in radial formation, creating a floral mandala. A mandala is a colorful way to spruce up the paths and brighten passerbys’ walks before the petals brown or blow away, and it is a quick, fun activity to do with friends this spring term.
Woodcock “Skydance”
Look upwards for the thespian “sky dance” of the male woodcock, a plump bird distinguished by brown and black plumage and a long beak. The American woodcock breeds in early spring, with males launching into their courtship sky dancing at dawn and dusk. The woodcock makes a buzzy peent call at short intervals as he begins a spiraling display flight. Each spiral becomes smaller and the peenting gets louder as the male flies upwards, until he is a distant blot in the sky. Suddenly, the bird plunges downward to its original position just a few feet off the ground, warbling throughout its precipitous plummet. Let’s hope that in the next two months, our seniors’ grades do not experience the dramatic downfall of a male woodcock’s sky dance.