Just Walking

The slashing rains have subsided, leaving a three-day siege of destructive wind behind, this morning's windows showing light ground frost and clear skies, before the sun ran the thermometer up to almost 60F this afternoon. Here in the valley, almost no snow remains, and local lakes show just translucent ice over perhaps 30 percent of their surfaces. Smaller ponds are ice free, while up in our hills others remain solid. Following the sunny seasonal urge, we stepped out along Bow Wow Road along the Mill Pond, where we saw a chittering belted kingfisher declaring territory, a few gulls scouring the ice for tasty bits thawing from in the pantry of ice under the sun, and two kinds of mergansers, the common and the hooded (photo), both of which will soon leave for their breeding waters much further north.
After some lawn raking and drive repairs, we sat on the front steps, sipping an AB, and found a flight of perhaps a thousand Canada geese headed north, so far up that they appeared to the eye to be a small cloud against the deep blue of a spring sky. Tomorrow they may be north of Montreal.