Weird Weather, Strange Birds

So.... here we are in the middle of March and the weather is turning spring like. I love spring but never expect it in March. I can't say I am complaining however. Remember my photo of the snowman a few days ago and the snow storm we had last week? Well...  things sure have changed! We had between 1.5 to 2 feet of snow at the end of last week but yesterday with our unusually warm weather things really changed.

This photo was taken yesterday in the late afternoon. Last night the wind was howling like crazy and even though it felt cold obviously it was still warm enough to melt the snow

By this morning almost all the snow is gone.

Now I expect to have a few nice days in March. I even expect sometimes, have it warm enough to melt the snow as has been happening over the last few days. But what I don't expect is to see geese. Yep! That's right, geese flying north. What a strange spring this is turning out to be.

At first I have to admit I didn't believe it. Mountain Man had been to a neighbors yesterday and told me when he came home that the neighbor had seen geese flying over head. I figured he must have been mistaken as we have had a lot of groups of crows flying and it is WAY to early for geese. So, today when Mountain Man came into the house and pretty much grabbed me and pulled me outside to see, I realized I was wrong.

What are they doing here so early and what does it mean for spring and summer this year? No clue, but it should be very interesting.

Spring Quad Ride

Posting about our afternoon drive yesterday got me to thinking. Not that I don't use my brain on a semi regular basis but from time to time I have thought back to my years spent living in the city and what I missed. During those times I rarely spent much time enjoying spring and the new life that would be arriving with it. Not that I didn't like the warming days but I was busy. With work and family taking up all my time, not to mention trying to keep up with all the household chores, lunches, appointments and errands I rarely had time to think about much else. Not so now, I've come to realize there are important moments in time when we must slow down, look around and enjoy the beauty around us.

One of those beautiful spring days that first year we decided to take a break from our labors and take the quad for a ride around our property. Since we have quite a bit of acreage it takes forever to walk it, but on a quad in a morning we can see most of it at a leisurely pace. The rumble of the motor does take away from the experience a bit but often the wildlife can't seem to tell where it is coming from so we are most times able to see a lot more riding than walking. Spring is the time when many babies should be out and we were hoping to see maybe some deer or a moose. Sadly this was not to be, maybe it was too soon? Maybe since the little ones were so young the mothers had hidden them too well for us to spot.

However, because the leaves were not quite out yet, we were able to spot two huge nests high up in the trees. Both of them were about a quarter of a mile, maybe a bit more from the house and our curiosity drew us to them. We often see ravens around here so we were thinking perhaps they were just raven nests. Nope! The first one we came too it was a bit difficult to see what was up there but with the binoculars it wasn't long before we were rewarded with the sight of a beautiful owl, obviously sitting on eggs as she didn't fly away despite us being right underneath her tree.

This was a sight I had never seen before and although I was excited there was slight apprehension there as well. We were planning on getting chickens soon and I really didn't want too loose any to predators. However, an owl sleeps during the day time right? Nothing to worry about.

The next nest we visited held a much noisier surprise as it was a hawks nest. Another first for me!  This was different however, it wasn't just one bird sitting on a nest. Oh one was there alright! But it's partner was as well and it was easy to tell by the noise that they were NOT happy with our visit!

One of them stayed with the nest while the other circled above us screaming at us to leave. I have to say this was a wonderful ride but I came back to the house with mixed feelings. While I was happy to be able to view such beautiful birds of prey and know they were continuing to propagate their species I wondered what their close proximity would mean in terms of our farm. I tried to push it out of my mind. There were enough rodents I'm sure to go around. After all the place was crawling with mice and small garter snakes. Hopefully there would be no need for concern.