Mar 12

The first crocus to bloom!!
The winter aconite blooms were open this afternoon too. They were enjoying the sunshine.
Sunshine and +7 C this afternoon so I went for a walk at Shubie after brunch. No owl and no mergansers there today, but the green winged teals were there. As we were watching them (there were several people watching them) a couple of the mallards had a fight. They were attacking and biting each other, and they weren't letting go. I suspect they were fighting over a female.
I ended up having a nice chat with a couple that was standing there. She had a Canon camera too. So we started talking about cameras, she was saying that she wished she knew more about her camera. I told her about the course that I did, so she was going to look that up later. We were talking about the different ducks. She lives on the Halifax side, so is not as familiar with the Dartmouth area and where the different ducks are. I told her about the wood duck at Sullivan's Pond and the northern pintail at Morash Park. They decided to go and look for the northern pintail. I was headed to Morash Park too, and talked to them there as well. They had already left though when I spotted the northern pintail on the far side of the pond.
One of the things I am really enjoying on my walks is talking to people again. During covid, even if people were out, they were scared to talk to strangers. Now people are much more comfortable chatting with others again. When we were watching the green winged teals, there were people saying 'Look at that tiny duck!' Then they would wonder what kind it was.  So I tell them, then pointed out one of the females. When I was at Morash Pond, a woman and her 2 daughters were there watching the pintails. She wanted to know the name of it. One of the girls, she was around 10 years old, she wasn't too impressed with her mother asking me a question. Then she asked me if I had taken any photos of the mandarin duck that was there last winter, and I told her that I had.
Back to work tomorrow and I have a couple of small jobs to do on Tuesday. Not sure what the weather is going to do this week. There was rain in the forecast, now they have snow and rain for Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday. It will be messy. I have the last big reline of the season scheduled for Thursday.