Item: The red-winged blackbird has replaced the robin as official harbinger-of-spring.

Son-of-a-gun! All I can say is: Anyone who has only one or two harbingers-of-spring is a basket case.

The old folks at good ol' Crothersville used to say that anyone who had a lot one item, but not much else, was so-and-so poor. Like, say a struggling chicken farmer, would be cackle poor, or egg poor.

If I could live at C-ville again, in the eyes my peers, I would be "harbinger-of-spring poor."

Oh, it is true, as the self-appointed and annointed pundits say, you can't depend on the robin anymore because it winters in good numbers in Hoosierland--it always is here.

Thus, the red-winged blackbird must bear the brunt of harbingerism (I just coined that word).

As much as I enjoy seeing "Klee" (my name for the red-wing male because that is what he sings as he sits forlornly on the dry stalk of last year's cattail as giant snowflakes swirl around his head), I can't pin all of my hopes for sunburn-type days on this fellow's pretty shoulders.

Yes, and I do so much enjoy seeing what I suspect is an early covey of robins with their rich, brownish-orange breasts vainly searching for lunch in my front-yard jungle.

But over the years my harbinger-of-spring list has been many-sided, and it has embraced both plant and animal kingdoms.

For example, I shan't forget a late winter day in the 1950s when I had mushed through deep snow to get to the middle of White River with my ice spud. I was there to determine thickness of the ice (it was well over 18 inches).

It had been a long, harsh winter. But on this sunbathed Sunday afternoon there was a high sky filled with clouds of buttermilk. As I stood there at the middle of the river, a male song sparrow cut loose with his "springs-a-comin'" song as I pushed all of my old reliable harbinger's aside to make a spot for this fellow.

Another year, when I was lucky enough to have a spring-fed pond in my front yard, I was getting the spring itch and kept looking for some unsuspecting harbinger to pop up and tell me spring was knocking at my door.

Toward mid-afternoon on a sun-blessed day I was headed out to check the mail, a walk of three or four hundred feet. Instead of crunching down the crushed-stone driveway, I decided to take the scenic route along the east edge of the pond.

The sun, still high, was bathing the shallow water along the east bank of the pond. I was looking for any sign that the food chain of the pond might be awakening when I noticed a slight movement of the dark, decaying leaves from the previous fall. I froze, my eyes glued to the movement--what could it be?

It took several minutes for the mystery to unfold before my wondering eyes, but then there it was . . . the snout and blinking eyes of one of my resident snapping turtles . . . awakening from a winter of slumber in the blue mud of the bottom of the pond. Another harbinger . . . another spring . . . is born. 

Over the years I have added to my life list of harbingers-of-spring such perfectly astounding natural phenomena as mourning doves sailing into thickets, gaggles of geese breaking up into family units, the bud of red maple trees turning into beautiful pinkish-red and green flowers (when viewed with a magnifying glass), buds of buckeye trees swelling, and innumerable others.

I guess if some potentate decreed that I had to choose one harbinger-of-spring to represent me at vernal equinoxial celebrations, I would give the job to (who else) the Harbinger-Of-Spring (Erigenia bulbosa), the earliest of our true earth-dwelling wildflowers. 

As many of us know her, Salt and Pepper gets her name from the fact that this is what she looks like--some grains of salt and pepper perched on some tiny light green leaves an inch or so above the earth. You have to get close to get a good look at this miniature, but when you see her, spring is nigh.

At this point Salt and Pepper is just pushing its way up through a still-cold earth. But when its minute tan and white flowers open, spring beauty and other late-sleepers will join the spring extravaganza.