On Sunday when the weather was warmer, I cleaned my wood duck boxes and put fresh shavings in them. The melting snow filled my pond (and my boots too when I stepped in deep snow with water running beneath the snow). Now tonight there is a fresh coating snow covering the ground and the ice layer on the pond. At least the amount of snow should be light if the forecast is correct.
Frozen Pond
With the string of cold nights, the water in my pond is already “stiff” and the fallen leaves are frozen into the ice. And with a predicted low of 3 degrees tonight, it doesn’t appear the leaves will become free in the next few days and may be trapped until spring.
Pond is Stiff
The recent heavy rains the past two days has caused flooding in some areas again and those areas don’t look as peaceful as this scene with American White Water-lilies covering the surface.
Peaceful Water View
The first sunny day in a while had the bees buzzing in the dandelions as well as the apple blossoms. And while the female orioles were busy building theirs nests, I spotted a male oriole in the apple blossoms as he was hunting insects. But as I was watching the oriole, I scared the wood ducks from the pond so I quickly took some photos and left the area so the ducks could return to their nest boxes.
Holiday Weekend at the Pond
The trees are slowing budding out but right now it is hard to know if it is spring or fall at a quick glance until the new leaves start to emerge and the grass starts to green up again.
Spring Slow Start
The ground is saturated from the snow melt this week so today’s very heavy rains created sheets of water covering most of my lawn. And my poor fish probably where washed out of my pond and the ducks didn’t seem so happy either in the rain.
Waterlogged
The freezing temperatures overnight caused an ice layer to almost cover all of my pond. There was a small patch of open water in which I spotted a pair of Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers floating close together. They probably needed the bigger body mallards to break up the ice, but at least by noon, they had this bigger patch of water. At least the ice wasn’t as thick or damaging as the iceberg that the Titanic hit 107 years ago on April 14 and sank less than 3 hours later.
Freezing Over Again
My pond refroze since the colder weather has returned but the water created unique inkblot like patterns across the surface of the pond.
Ice Spots
It is election day and I vote for a warmer week but it looks like it will be a loss if the forecast is right. Between the recent rains and melting snow, my pond is overflowing again. Normally the spring snow melt causes it to fill up so this picture almost looks similar except for the leaves haven’t been packed down under the snow and no ice on the pond plus greener grass than in the spring melt.
Fall Overflowed
The sun disappeared very early in the day but it did peek out very briefly near sunset just long enough for a rainbow to shine in the sky.
A Brief Rainbow
