If you were out in nature at all this Friday or Saturday, you may have noticed some people with binoculars looking a bit crazed, perhaps more unkempt even than usual, checking their watches and rushing about on trails.

Do you remember what it was like 450 million years ago? Neither do I. But horseshoe crabs, somewhere in their DNA, remember. They were around in some form over 200 million years before dinosaurs first appeared, and 300 million years before birds.

It’s now finally May, which means spring, and spring migration, get serious. Gardens look like gardens again, bees are about, and just like that, familiar birds are back.

What’s happening in the bird world depends a lot on the scale of inquiry. This just means what you see in your neighborhood won’t match the Cape-wide highlights I’m typically crowing about.

Last week, the Cape experienced a phenomenon strangely rare on a peninsula known for its bird migrations. A genuine “fallout” of migrating songbirds began partway through the day on Thursday and continued through the afternoon and beyond.

Though it’s April, spring can be tough to catch sight of around here. One day, the sun is out, early bees are buzzing, and Tree Swallows are swarming the nest boxes.

As we speak, river herring are fighting currents and a gauntlet of anthropogenic barriers in an epic annual struggle to make more of themselves. And many of our newly arriving birds are depending on them.

Like most people I like to complain about March, which we will thankfully put behind us in a few days. It’s not just the measurable snow and daytime highs in the 20s more than a week into astronomical “spring”, it can also be a dull time for birding.

If I were marketing Cape Cod to visiting birders, late March would be a tough sell. The Ospreys are back, sure, and that’s exciting.

After a much-needed week in sunny Florida, where the birds are so tame that I felt like I was taking pictures in a zoo, it was nice to come home to some signs of spring.