It Might Be Spring!

On Saturday two of my good friends, Margaret and Elaine came out to the house. It was a gorgeous day to get out and stretch the legs with my pals. We went on one of my favourite walks, the duck ponds. I haven't been up to the ponds since we had all that snow. There was so much evidence of spring . . . starting with the new lambs in the fields.Toads copulating in puddles, in the grass . . . . everywhere really.
With all the prey around there will be predators. Lots of badger prints in the soft mud.
One can make out the marks that the badger's formidable claws make in the soft mud. The badger set that is up there must be getting bigger, there were lots of tracks around. There were deer tracks in the mud as well. I haven't seen the big buck tracks in the mud just yet but he's around (or at least he was here in October) as there were dainty fawn tracks next to the adult female tracks.
We saw this deer in the distance as we rounded the bend. The three of us and my bouncy dog got quite close before it ambled off into the trees. I think it knew it was in no real danger from us. I got this photo and enlarged it a bit so that you could see it more clearly.

Cleaning the greenhouses today and yesterday, I came across a lone ladybug, a white butterfly and a couple of bumblebees. The greenhouses are especially dirty this spring. I wish I had self-cleaning greenhouse glass as there is a lot of algae on the glass this year.

We had a huge wasp show up in the house. It buzzed along on the inside of one of the windows until The Man of the Place swatted it with a rolled up newspaper.
The daffodils are starting to bloom . . . I guess it can safely be said that winter is over!