22 Mar/18
It's been a drawn out spring, neither cold nor warm. Past few weeks, -5 to around 0 or +3. I some places that face south the snow is melting fast, and the surface is mud. The ground seems to be warming up, as there are some gatherings of water along the Red that have seeped in. The Red is still solid around Churchill park.
However, I saw two Canada geese today, heading north. Don't know where they are heading to, but it's a good sign of spring!
I wanted to talk about some posts I made. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10310903
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10035205
On this tree, which was marked for removal for Dutch Elm Disease, there was a wood duck type nesting box, which was removed before the tree was taken down. I have no idea whether the box was used or not - personally, I have never seen wood ducks in that area of the river. When the tree was cut down either the tree trunk pieces were removed or they were burned (the area had ash around where the pile of wood was). A week or so later, I went by the area, and was photographing some birds, and found my dog sniffing around the area. I found an egg shell, photoed it, and then saw some more. It looked like there were about 5 eggs in total, no residue in the eggs, but a few holes in the ground about 2 cm deep. I wonder if these are wood duck eggs from the box, but don't know why they would be so close to the tree. If they are not, what are they? It was (and still is) too cold in that area for eggs that size to start emerging, so I don't know what they are. I've added Wood Duck as a placeholder, but have had no attempts at ID so far.
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