Out of curiosity, I plotted Stephen's PUMA arrival dates into Excel and ran a regression. The data is surprisingly tight with an R-squared of 0.824 (1.000 is a perfect correlation). Then I ran the data out a few more years assuming a continuing trend and I got the data below. Of course, it's not likely that if you continue the line through 2044 that they'll basically be arriving on Christmas Day but still, it's got to show something about warming that they've basically returned an entire month early since he began his observations!

Real arrival      Regression line 
                (predicted arrival)
4/16/1999         4/11/1999
4/8/2000          4/7/2000
4/3/2001          4/6/2001
3/30/2002         4/4/2002
4/4/2003          4/1/2003
3/26/2004         3/29/2004
3/28/2005         3/27/2005
3/30/2006         3/25/2006
3/24/2007         3/23/2007
3/19/2008         3/19/2008
                  3/18/2009
                  3/16/2010
                  3/13/2011
                  3/10/2012
                  3/9/2013
                  3/6/2014
                  3/4/2015
                  3/1/2016

                 12/26/2043 
                 12/23/2044 

Tyler Bell

California, Maryland


----- Original Message ----
From: Stephen Hult <>
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 5:58:13 PM
Subject: [MDOSPREY] Purple Martins are back

Five adult male Purple Martins just returned to my colony in Edgewater MD. 
This is by far to earliest they have ever returned.  In past years they have 
returned on the following dates:

1999 April 16
2000 April 8
2001 April 3
2002 March 30
2003 April 4
2004 March 26
2005 March 28
2006 March 30
2007 March 24
2008 MARCH 19

Stephen Hult
Edgewater Maryland


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