The landscape is transforming quickly. Snow is receding visibly every day and now it’s just patches rather than any real snow cover to speak of. The next major breakthrough will come when the lakes break free of ice, normally it happens at the end of April or early May at the latest.

The early spring flowers are popping up in the warm spots and my crocuses are always early. The flowers closest to the house were blooming while there was still a pile of snow a meter high in front of them! But now that pile is gone of course and I had plenty of space and dry yester-year grass to kneel on to shoot them.

In the afternoon we made a major effort to find cranes and other migratory birds. I’ve been a little bit perplexed that I haven’t seen the big crane flocks in Veckebo that normally are there every year, now it’s only been a handful of cranes in the distance. And when we were driving around through all the big fields around Ljusdal, all we saw was one pair of cranes! Since I don’t think there’s been any major drop in the crane population, the only conclusion I can make is that the cranes’ breeding wetlands are open enough for the cranes to move straight home instead of gathering in the fields while waiting for the thaw. Proof of the point, there’s a pair of cranes in the marshland in Kullas (the highest point on the road between Korskrogen and Loos) already. They nested there last year and I wondered if it really could succeed. They don’t seem to mind the traffic, but I’m fairly sure that somebody got out of the car to take a closer look. The cranes have a zero-tolerance policy about people and sure enough, the nest was abandoned before the baby hatched. On the other hand, it’s normal that a crane couple would have a failed breeding attempts in the first years they’re together. So provided that people leave them well alone, maybe they’ll succeed this year?