Evaluating fruit for ripeness

Seen on a walk on our neighborhood in SW Maine; there was also a vernal pool with lots of tadpoles and a spotted sandpiper, and Merlin identified a singing bird as rose-breasted grosbeak. We didn’t see it

Random Newton Highlands front yard becomes wild turkey lek (there was a hen by the front door not looking interested)

My wife found two red-backed salamanders and a small frog between the soil filling a small plastic planter and the planter about a week ago, neither moving at all, all looking very flat (except for the salamander tails, which were rounded, more like healthy earthworms). We turned the soil ball back over, but left it out of the pot. Next day, no frog. Today, no salamanders either. Any comments?

My car (parked under a sidewalk tree, Norway maple) gets covered in maple flowers every year, but I had never noticed the samaras forming in the flowers until I saw a different tree in bloom yesterday

Grafting apple trees today. I melted the wax (to seal the cut tops of the scions) with sun and a magnifying glass.

Thermometer and weather report both say over 60 F but still…

Walked a mile on a rail-trail through Scarborough Marsh (Maine) today. Besides snowy and great egrets, glossy ibis, common and red-breasted mergansers, & green winged teal, we saw 3 chronolog.io camera sites, new to me. Line up your phone in a bracket, take a picture, and email it to that web service. The web site puts all the pictures into a time lapse, showing the same view at different seasons, weather, tide levels. https://chronolog.io/site/SMA101

Wild turkeys are smart enough (and lazy enough) to recognize a shoveled path for what it is

Small triumph: There was a rectangular lump in the snow about where the news carrier usually leaves the paper. One shovel scoop got it.