Seasonal spring generally comes when we most need to feel elevated.

Some years seasonal spring’s coming lingers late according to the calendar. There are locations, however, where spring is present long before what the calendar proclaims it to be.

Locations, habitats if you will, offer sites, sounds, smells, and even food a month or more ahead of spring in a forest, field, lowland or garden. These early places are appropriately called spring ponds, pools and spring-fed streams; in other words they are springs. The bubbling water comes forth degrees above freezing and cools slowly while entering a stream or collecting in a pool or pond.

Standing in a spring’s water feels warm in winter cool during summer, even through knee boots

One green plant is so abundant here we forget that water cress is a naturalized salad plant from Europe. Scientifically named Nasturtium officinale, it is not related to a garden nasturtium, an herb of a different genus.

Smaller still is a floating plant, which is mixed in with rooted water cress. Several species of duckweed exist here, lesser, star, and big they’re named. They, too, feed animals, especially mallards and later wood ducks.

American beaver and common muskrat share these plants and go terrestrial to get even more plants, sometimes willow, aspen, birch, and maple are favorites of beavers. Grasses come later to feed the marsh rat. Several bloomers show at separate times; very early skunk cabbage, loved by wild turkeys, and marsh marigold that color the banks purple and gold elsewhere.

Some American robins and Eastern bluebirds remain throughout winter and find conditions in spring pools a good place to drink and wonder about picking off bugs and other insects that find the water fine. Usually freeze-dried small fruits still hang nearby and attract these birds when disturbed from the watery habitat.

Deer are seen eating water cress and occasionally a booted plant gatherer steps on a shed antler tucked in the water. Bald eagles nest nearby. They perch above these spring-fed trout streams without regard for our winter fishing regulations.

Great blue herons, snipe and woodcock, find food in spring ponds, too.

When snow persists beyond the pool, animal tracks document raccoons, skunks, bobcats, rabbits and squirrels have been about.

Well below zero air temperatures help create a winter wonderland on the upright water cress, shrubs and trees.

Weeks, sometimes months later some of these uplifting activities are observed farther “inland.”

Seeing a bald eagle in the vicinity may suggest a nest tree is near. Now is the time to “read” the signs of what’s likely happening deep within the bowl of a two-ton nest. Is the adult incubating or caring for 1-3 eaglets? The male parent may present the female with a fish or rabbit, even a muskrat or turkey to feed the chicks.

Recent grand weather is likely a blip in a trout fisher’s mind,” according to Bret Schultz, trout sage from Black Earth, Wisconsin.

“There are a few bugs out we don’t normally see until mid-March but when the highs drop to normal, so will insect activity.

The mild weather has raised the water level a bit and made water slightly dirty, both good characters to an angler.

“I’ll say one thing; it has given me many more miles of exercise because it’s easier walking and I must to walk more to find the trout,” Schultz said.

Doug Williams, at D W Sports Center in Portage, Wisconsin has started seeing people doing a little window shopping for outside items. “Maybe there is something special that’s wanted or needed, or a place to spend tax return dollars. Maybe it’s something new in archery or in the line of long guns that is worth considering,” he said.

Spring is on the way, but until it arrives in earnest, warm up in a warm water spring.

— Jerry Davis is a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.