April showers

Spring, which seemed to explode upon us in March, slowed to a dawdle through April.  Cool, wet weather dampened the enthusiasm of plants and animals alike.  Trees and flowers slowed their growth.  The tulips, which at first seemed likely to bloom well before our annual festival, politely declined to appear until the start of May.  A flotilla of red admiral butterflies sailed into the City on a tide of warm, southern air, then floundered in a late gust of winter.  The birds stopped moving through the area, and those that had already arrived hunkered down.  The weather wasn't particularly unusual for April -- just such a contrast to the early promise of March.

Personally, the cold and damp pleased me after last year's drought.  The early thaw in March had brought the spring freshet at least two weeks earlier than usual; ice had vanished from the lakes in Algonquin Park at the beginning of April; the Conservation Authorities had already begun talking about water conservation.  Instead, the Rideau River has run high through April, and the wetlands brim with water.

I did get outside a few times in April, mostly for work.

I took this last photograph in the Upper Poole Creek Wetland, along the Trans-Canada Trail just west of Stittsville.  A first for me.  Shivering in the cool mist, after scanning the marsh in vain for anything of interest, I became aware of a quiet peeping.  I moved a few feet down the trail, and in a few moments spotted a woodcock sitting and calling from a log.  I've heard woodcock, of course, in the evenings over marshes and wet fields:  the winnowing of their wings as they dive in display flights.  But I'd never seen one before, and never expected to see one sitting miserably in the open.  Apparently, I wasn't the only creature discouraged by the cold.