Calendars have been telling us since March 21 that spring is here, but most calendars hang on walls or are perched on desks indoors. Outdoors, temperatures in the high 50s and 60s have been rare. But now, I think we have made it.

The snowdrops, of course, provided a clue that spring was coming some time ago, but the snow in my yard hid them from view. But now pinkletinks and otters and preening Tom turkeys with their harems have been verifying spring’s arrival, even if the thermometer hasn’t.

I heard pinkletinks melodiously singing at the start and the end of the day near Whitings’ Pond, but it seems to me that they are rather shy this year. They stopped their cheery chirping as soon as I passed by, and only resumed it when I was in the distance.

Deer have been more overt. Marjorie Pierce was stopped for half an hour or so one early morning on Tea Lane in Chilmark while two deer courted, dancing back and forth across the road. The swans are nesting at Squibnocket Pond and the osprey are nesting too.

The skunk cabbages, my usual harbingers of the good news, seemed unaware, however, that spring was here until last week. I always make a pilgrimage to the swampy places near Glimmerglass Pond in West Tisbury to watch them erupt. But it was not until this past weekend that at last I saw that they were bursting up in muddy places.

Each spring I used to go looking for lady’s slippers in Vineyard Haven’s Lagoon Woods when I lived there. But house construction, my old Tisbury neighbors tell me, has largely destroyed that wild orchid’s natural habitat.

Blue scylla is carpeting the lawn at the Paul Cook house at the head of Music street. The house has been sold and a moving van was parked for a time on the lawn, but, happily, the scylla has sprung back. Pussy willows are out on Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs and the witch hazel is golden near up-Island Cronig’s. Forsythia is beginning to bloom here and there. An Edgartown friend tells me she began forcing hers in January as a harbinger of spring.

Rocks in the woods are carpeted with velvety green moss. Lichens are decorating fallen tree stumps. Anne Burt has planted purple and yellow pansies in a hollow tree trunk at the entrance to Tiasquam Road and they are thriving.

An otter swam by her place on the Tiasquam about 7 o’clock the other morning. That otter, or another, was playing at Glimmerglass when Nancy Cabot and the family dog, Cassie, were on a morning walk a few days ago. Albert Fischer saw an otter feasting on trout in the Mill Pond. Albert has had bluebirds at his West Tisbury feeder, too, and he says two hummingbirds were fighting the other day at Polly Bassett’s in Edgartown.

Charles Young sighted a woodcock in the Aquinnah woods. I know that I have a rabbit hole in my backyard because one of my cats has been hunting baby rabbits. Wherever there are rhododendrons, the leaves are uncurling as they welcome warmer weather. The magnolias at Robert Ganz’s are budding in Chilmark and there are piping plovers on their beach. And at last, daffodils are brightening roadsides and gardens everywhere.

Although winter is my favorite season and the winter that has just passed has more than lived up to my expectations, I will admit to welcoming these first signs that spring has finally arrived. It feels quite good to be tucking away the wool mittens and scarves in a bureau drawer.