the ice is gone

only some ice washed up onto the shore, or onto docks, is evidence of the ice recently departed from the lake


can you see the pair of bufflehead ducks at all, swimming away from me and my camera?

can you see the ospreys' nest in the top of the white pine? I look forward to many exciting sightings of these magnificent water-diving raptors.

Did spring suddenly arrive?

Sometime during the last few days the ice disappeared off the lake.

I spied some Buffleheads, Loons, Merganzers and Goldeneyes on the lake. In a very tall white pine in the woods, a pair of ospreys have built their huge nest of sticks, higgledy-piggledy.

As usual, all these birds do not allow me to appreciate them, swimming out of range of my camera, in the case of the water-birds, or flying off to circle the nest, in the case of the ospreys. The ospreys have an annoyed exchange of "yewk, yewk, yewk" between them as they fly around, in reaction to my disturbing the quiet.

As I write, a big wild turkey tom is showing off for a female, fanning out his colourful tail feathers. The female has sedately turned her back on him and is walking away to join the several other turkeys, striding across the field to the south of my house. The rows of corn stubble stick out in uneven rows in the dark soil, bare now that the snow has melted -- for good I hope.

And I noticed several buzzards circling in the air above the barn, when I popped into the kitchen to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. I wonder what carrion has attracted them?

Water has done its work on my laneway, washing away enough of the gravel around the culvert that it looks like everything might wash away quite easily, maybe even the next time we have some rain. The culvert directs the runoff from the north fields under the laneway.

The arrival of spring is not all that obvious in the woods, as yet -- I looked and looked!

Mosses have been green all winter, but they seem to have thrown up a fine, hairy mat of ?fruiting bodies.

The leaves of Round-lobed Hepatica, Hepatica americana, which persist all winter, are still wearing their winter red. One of the earliest woods' flowers to bloom, no sign of blooms is visible yet.

I'm looking forward to the exponential flowering of spring; I can keep up with what's in bloom at first, but soon, the explosion of flowers is altogether too much to enumerate.