— Vladimir Putin

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A midge is a small fly. Those long-legged delicate flies that look like (but are not) mosquitoes are called midges. So are gnats, blackflies and no-see-ums. Putin appears to be saying (above) that true patriots will be spit out, but we assume he is referring instead to scum and traitors. And how would anyone know what was in a midge’s mind when it flew into someone’s mouth, whether it flew in by accident or on purpose? I like the quote, but I suspect it may suffer in translation.

Still, I am grateful that I can read this and other Putin quotes from a safe distance. I would not be laughing if he was my president. And in fact Putin is making it more and more difficult to laugh when we watch or read or listen to the news. The daily terrible news about Ukraine has slid in and taken the place of the daily terrible news about COVID.

Every March I am absorbed with a far less serious concern: When will the red-winged blackbirds return to Keene? I always look forward to their annual migration to Keene because it is one of the very first signs of spring. Usually it is still snowing when they wing their way back and sit massed on tree branches–the same trees every year–filling the air with their unique song.

I didn’t know they were here until yesterday, when I ran into Barbara S. at Valley Grocery. I asked whether she had seen any sign of blackbirds yet, and she said yes, they are in their usual spot across the street from Keene Central School.

It’s the male red-winged blackbirds, accompanied by starlings and grackles and those skanky cowbirds who lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, who come along first, usually in early to mid March.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Cowbirds have absolutely no sense of family values.

What about the baby cowbirds, though? Some birds, for instance robins, refuse to foster the little changelings, and knock them right out of the nest. It’s not the baby cowbirds’ fault. Shouldn’t we do something? No.

The other day a man collecting his mail at the Village Post Office at McDonough’s Hardware in Keene Valley told me he had just seen a black bear between Keene and Lake Placid. This was one of those sunny, comparatively warm days we’ve had this month, but I wouldn’t have thought it was anything to come out of hibernation for.

This man then said, well, he shouldn’t say the bear came out of hibernation, because bears don’t truly hibernate. They do something else instead; he couldn’t remember the word.

Later I Googled “Do bears hibernate?” (What did we use to do before the Internet and fake news? We looked it up in the encyclopedia or consulted reference books, or we called the reference librarian, or we asked our granddad or Uncle Frank or our friend Irene because they knew all that stuff.) It turns out that scientists used to say that black bears and grizzly bears do not truly hibernate, but rather go into a state of dormancy, torpor, winter sleep, dormancy or– my favorite term– carnivorean lethargy. When biologists took into account that bears can go for as long as seven months without eating, drinking, urinating or defecating, they changed their minds on the subject, so it is once again correct to say that bears hibernate in the winter. In fact, biologists went back retroactively to state that bears were hibernating in the winter all along, despite what your Uncle Frank had to say on the subject.

According to Eric C. Hellgren at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, in his study “Physiology of Hibernation in Bears,” 1998, “Is the physiological state attained by bears during the denning period appropriately termed hibernation? Over 30 years of research in the laboratories of G.E. Folk, Jr. and R.A. Nelson, among others, have led investigators to unequivocally state that hibernation is the fitting term for the dormant or torpid state of bears during denning.” Other scientists have concurred.

So that’s settled anyway. As for the question, when will spring arrive? Officially, it arrived Sunday, March 20, but we can’t do anything about the weather. Or the world news.

Have a good week.

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(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the News for more than 20 years.)