Listen to the Birds.

In Collingwood and across Simcoe County, early spring often arrives first through birdsong rather than blooms.

The garden still looks asleep. Branches are bare. The colours haven’t returned.

From a distance, everything feels unchanged — like winter is holding on just a little longer.

But if you pause, and listen, something entirely different is happening.

The birds are already there.

Before the first green unfurls, before the perennials push through the soil, before the tulips even consider rising — the birds begin. Their songs fill the quiet spaces between the branches, carrying a message that the eye cannot yet see.

Spring doesn’t arrive all at once. It arrives in layers.

And sound is often the first.

Standing beneath the trees, looking up into a network of bare limbs against a soft sky, you begin to notice movement — a flicker, a shift, a small silhouette tucked between twigs. What first appeared still is suddenly alive.

They gather at feeders, land lightly, then disappear again into the branches. There is a rhythm to it. A quiet, steady return.

It’s easy to overlook this stage of the season. We wait for colour, for blossoms, for visible change. But the truth is, the garden begins long before that — in sound, in motion, in presence.

Listening becomes a way of seeing.

It asks us to slow down. To soften our focus. To let go of expectation and instead notice what is already here.

Because even in what looks like emptiness, there is life unfolding.

So before the leaves arrive, before the garden fully wakes — step outside, stand still, and listen.

The birds will tell you everything you need to know.