We enjoyed a pretty nice day yesterday, but still had a cold wind; today is better.  Lots of sunshine, 62 degrees, and that's on the "cold" side of our house where the thermometer always reads lower than any others.  There's a strong wind out of the southeast, and almost no snow on the ground.  I can see some high on the hillside in back of our house, but other than a few pockets where it either was drifted or is shaded, the snow is gone!

I had this message from our resident wildlife reporter, Evelyn Richer, yesterday: 

Well, the iceout update from here is that the cove is nearly clear of
ice with several large 'flotillas' drifting by from time to time coming
out of the marsh, and there is about 20 feet of soft ice against our
shoreline, but a clear area where the loon nest will be when placed.

We have about 40 Canada Geese off and on and mallards, tons of Woodies,
Common Mergansers, hooded Mergansers, Ring-necks, black ducks, grebes, a
few gulls, and an otter to list a few...

The male loon was sited at about 8:30 this morning, and at 10:20 the
female arrived... They are fishing and scouting out the nesting site...
the nest cannot go in place until the ice recedes from our shoreline a
bit more, but probably by Monday...

Anyway, spring is on it's way now!!  YEA!!!

Just a little later I had another message from Evelyn:    

The ice is getting dark!!  The loons have had a visit from the eagle
too... so there's one more [specimen to report].

All of this is good news, and we also saw two loons in the middle pond yesterday.  I have been struggling to get a slide show ready to post here, but for some reason, Kizoa is not operating well.  I've tried just about everything I can think of, with no success as yet.  I will post individual pictures - but it won't tell the story quite as effectively.  Starting with first pond in West Danville, there was open water almost the full length past the beach.  There is open water under the bridge, and lots of water going over the dam, but when we were there at about 11 o'clock, there was still about 50-75 feet of ice holding between the open water from the narrows to the bridge. 


In the middle pond, there is a long finger of open water along the Route 2 side, and that's where we saw the two loons, calmly diving and seeming to be right at home.  These are probably the same two that have nested on the middle pond in the past. 


The big pond is a different story.  Yesterday there was hardly any sign that the ice is melting, but after a couple days of sunshine, especially today with temps in the 60s, the ice will take a beating.  Yesterday there was open water in the narrows between the middle and big pond; the open water from the cove that Evelyn mentioned stretches just a little beyond the small island, Pearl's Island.  The shorelines are not showing a lot of water yet.  Today we have a southeast wind that will tend to shove the ice up the pond - except there's no open space for it to really move that much.  That will no doubt change in the next couple of days.  As Evelyn says, the ice is getting dark, and that means it's melting from underneath.  We are watching the flag and the clock, but nothing seems imminent yet.  This weekend, nights are going to be cold, and that will slow things a bit.  

 I'm guessing slide shows are not going to happen for a little while, at least until we can figure out what's going on that I cannot upload as I want.

Later:  We finally got a slideshow together.  Slides.