After a week of winter weather, what could be more welcome than signs of spring? The forecast calls for rain – not snow – and the clocks are changing early Sunday, so right off the bat we have two unmistakable indications that the times, as Bob Dylan would say, they are a changin’.

Here, in handy checklist form, are 10 more of our naturalist department’s favorite signs of spring:

• Melting snow. We waited and waited for it to come, but now, five days after it fell, I’m not that sorry to see it start to disappear.