Spring arrived overnight! Well, not really. On the morning of April 28, the lake was completely iced over. By the morning of April 29 it appeared to be mostly melted. In reality, the dam backed the water up and the lake rose like 8 feet.  I can’t imagine that ice melted overnight but whatever. At least I don’t have to look at it anymore.

The birds are coming back! I’ve seen several mergansers, a few geese and the first loon has arrived and it is extremely vocal. In the pic of  the loon in the gallery above, you can see a bald eagle perched on an ice floe in the background (upper left – where I put the notation). The eagle took off shortly after I snapped the pic and circled above the lake, apparently fishing.

On Apr 28, I took a walk down the beach before the lake level rose so dramatically and noticed this birch tree near the dock that had been gnawed by a beaver(?).  Kind of weird that it picked that tree since there isn’t any brook or inlet nearby to build a dam.  Maybe it was just lunch, though it took down a few nearby saplings as well and dragged them away. Last fall I’d noticed the saplings had been taken down and dragged away so I imagine the gnawing of this tree happened at the same time. Just guessing, of course.

The two lake view pics at the end of the gallery were taken from the beach just past Len’s beachfront. The first one shows the lake completely iced in on April 28. Then the next one was taken about 24 hours later from a similar vantage point (but not zoomed quite so much).