Ah, the first signs of spring: Crocuses are in bloom, animals are emerging drowsily from their burrows and the forecast is pleasant. Wait, what month is this?

On Wednesday Ben Sipprell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service forecast office in Taunton, confirmed what Islanders who spend any amount of time outdoors already know: This has been an extremely mild winter, with temperatures for the area averaging five to six degrees above normal.

“As it stands right now this winter is looking like it’s going to be one of the mildest on record,” the meterologist said.

The effect on Island wildlife has been more difficult to measure, although there is a general impression that something is amiss.

“Things are early this year,” Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary director Suzan Bellincampi said this week. “We’re getting calls about active squirrels, you’ve got crocuses up. We were hearing woodcocks in January which is pretty early — woodcocks are usually a March thing. I keep hoping my bees stay dormant because there aren’t any flowers for them.”

Other less desirable critters might instead benefit from the balmy weather. Sam Telford, a professor of infectious diseases at Tufts University who is helping Vineyard boards of health launch a study of Lyme disease on the Island, said that ticks are still out for blood.

“What they’ve been doing is, instead of it getting so cold during much of the winter where they just go dormant, the ticks have been active, looking for hosts,” he said.

Dr. Telford said that while he expects the spring and summer tick populations to resemble years past, there could be ramifications farther down the road.

“If more ticks were successful in finding animals to feed on during the wintertime, it could be that in July there will be more ticks on mice, in which case we would see more nymphs the following spring,” he said. Dr. Telford said such predictions were still speculation, but in the short-term, warmer winter weather could mean both more active ticks and more active hikers.

“I don’t know if that will translate to more Lyme disease, but it might translate to more ehrlichiosis because the adult tick does transmit that a little more effectively,” he said.

At the Polly Hill Arboretum, executive director Tim Boland is unsettled by what he sees as a botanical calendar gone awry.

“The winter-flowering witch hazels are blooming almost a month ahead of normal right now, and that’s really strange,” he said. “Right now I’m looking at a forsythia and it’s plump and ready to break, which is also kind of weird.”

Mr. Boland says that such early flowering may be pretty but is potentially fatal to Island flora.

“What’s troublesome is that some plants have not gone into full dormancy,” he said. “They need that chilling period, it sets them up for leaf and flower emergence and then a good fruit set. The worrisome thing is, particularly with fruit trees, plants might tend to break bud early and put their leaves out early. Then a freeze can wipe them out.”

Last month the USDA unveiled its revised plant hardiness zones map, which saw the natural ranges for much of the country’s plants shift northward. Martha’s Vineyard kept its zone classification (7a), but Mr. Boland said he has seen subtle changes to the suite of flora able to thrive in the local climate.

“We’re seeing things that could never overwinter here before,” he said. “Things like an invasive grass called Japanese silvergrass that would never, ever fully form seeds here because they wouldn’t have a long enough growing season. Or the ornamental mimosa tree, you wouldn’t see its seedlings make it through the winter, now they’re beginning to.”

In the water, New England Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse explained this year’s higher mortality rate among stranded sea turtles on the Cape and Islands as a result of warmer temperatures that tempted the animals to linger in New England waters longer than was prudent.

Elsewhere on the Island, anecdotally — and in this reporter’s own traumatic experience — the earthy musk of the skunk, an animal that goes dormant but does not hibernate, has been more apparent on Vineyard breezes.

“It’s normal for skunks to wake up from their dormancy to go out to find some food, spray some porches, then go back in,” said Ms. Bellincampi. “Instead of happening four or five times it may happen six or seven times because of the warmer weather.”

But Mr. Sipprell is quick to distinguish between short-term weather and longer-term climate trends. Just as a fluke snowstorm shouldn’t be wielded by skeptics to bludgeon the state of climate science, an unseasonable winter’s day doesn’t herald the sweltering end. Short-term variations in temperatures may meander, but a general direction does emerge from the longer view. Of the 10 hottest years ever recorded since 1880, nine have occurred in the past 10 years, with 1998 as the one outlier. Still, next year could bring a return to punishing New England weather.

“If you were to ask the people of Alaska right now, or even out in Romania or the Ukraine, they’d tell you theres no such thing as global warming,” said Mr. Sipprell. “They’ve boasted the coldest temperatures ever on record and the heaviest snowfalls as well. It’s very rare you see snows in North Africa and this year it’s happened two to three times. You just don’t see snow as bad as it was in Algiers. It’s very impressive.”

But the weather has not only been a source of fascination to climate scientists. On Thursday Dr. Telford was similarly intrigued.

“It’s been really bizarre,” he said. “Guys like me get to say, yay I’ll see something interesting this year!”