Reflections from Crumbly Acres: woodcock

I've been hearing the American woodcocks. The are also called timberdoodles! I cannot photograph them, so here is a video.
The morning sun was shining on the cat dishes, as well as the dustpan and whisk! Everyone fed, cats, people, goldfish, and off we went for a walk. It was so nice to see the sun.

Hooper is incredibly happy the snow is gone. This is the path to the meadow, where he usually stops to feel the moss, warm in the sunshine. He practically hugs the ground! This is what he did the first time we let him out last year, when he was a kitten.

The male wood duck chose to walk from the frog pond, across the ground, to the wetland.
Frog pond 1 from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

After all that work, the water is up, again on the dock. Butch raccoon visited.

Our nights have been below zero, not by much, but enough to create a thin layer of ice.

The cat's favourite tree. They love climbing it.

I'm down on "The Point" here. A spit of land in the wetland. It is rich with critters, life awakened with the warmth of the spring solstice. The sun warms the shore in the morning. This side faces southeast. The ice has melted.

This side of The Point is still frozen, the trees shading the water.

Along we walked. Just in front of me, I could see something in the water. It was a muskrat. Here is a file photo. One summer they lived in the frogpond.

The blue jays followed. I wondered what they were up to. Turns out, there was a barred owl, who flew madly across the wetland. You can see where it was roosting. Just for posterity. All I could see were it's lovely barred tail feathers. The blue jays followed it.

Wetland from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Hooper contemplates the wetland. He ended up walking along the ice, parallel to my path, for some reason, as we ambled back to the house.

The meadow has a pond, where the mallards tend to land. The buds are beginning to grow on the trees. Soon this will dry up, or drain behind me into the wetland.