You know winter is ending when…

The roads are littered with dead, furry animals.

Yes it’s that time again. After the brutal winter the various indigenous animals are emerging from their hibernation, stretching, cleaning and in some species spectacularly ejecting their feces plug. Then they go looking for food and all they find is high-speed metal and not very forgiving metal at that. Skunks, Woodchucks and the odd Racoon are rapidly being splayed out on the local roads. Quite sad, you just have to hope that their feeble bodies made enough of a dent to annoy the drivers.

After a couple of fabulously mild days last it went  colder again, stymying the enthusiasm. Spring is here, even if it hasn’t officially started yet and the first Killdeer or Red-winged Blackbird can’t be long in coming. American Robins are building up although most are sensibly hanging around dung heaps until it is really hospitable everywhere.

My local forays have been very limited. The whole house selling thing has occupied a lot of time. On the upside we are now in the ‘board outside’ phase and my final Quebec blog post is formulating in my mind. I’m also in two minds as to whether this blog remains named as is, or I rename. The other option is a whole new blog, we’ll have to wait and see.

There was a nice article recently in the Montreal Gazette by Prof. David Bird, ex of Montreal but now living out west somewhere. If you missed it, here is the link: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/a-birds-eye-view-of-montreal?fb_action_ids=10152607738407751&fb_action_types=og.comments

In the UK there is a situation developing which shows just how shallow the general populace is. Some time ago a national petition in favour of increased protection for the Hen Harrier – a species mercilessly destroyed by Gamekeepers despite it being illegal – attracted about 20,000 signatures. Now a graceless fool, who is essentially a motoring correspondent, has been suspended for yet another faux-pas and it gets 700,000+ signatures to reinstate him. Makes me glad I’m Canadian!

As the winter peters out I tend to look back and see what I was doing on the same day, March 18^th, in 2007, 2009 and 2012 and the magic of a good notebook lets me relive each day.

2007 saw a big snow dump around March 17^th, 8-10 inches my notebook says. I still went out, seeing both crossbill species on Chemin Scotch near Grenville.

2009 had tons of geese everywhere and the two spring black birds, Common Grackle and Red-winged Blackbird were ‘in’. We still had a couple of Snowy Owls but the Hawk Owl that wintered along Chemin Fief had gone.

2012 was obviously well past the thaw, I saw 24 species at St-Lazare sand pits, you’d be lucky to manage five at the moment! Also note the lack of another Hawk Owl, this time out Cookshire-Eaton way. Perhaps I need a psychiatrist to tell me why I twitched yet another Hawk Owl!

And March 17^th 2015 – still winter.

I wonder whether the pied Red-winged Blackbird below will come back this year, same field, same bush these past three years.

It seems that a few of you enjoyed my extract from `Park Life` in that last post, and I corrected the little typo, thanks. I expect to publish soon, you can be sure I`ll let you know when.