Water, Water

Yesterday afternoon, the snow fell thick and wet and carpeted everything again.  This was the scene from our window...

By this morning however, things had warmed up by several degrees and during the night, the snow had turned to rain resulting in a vast amount of water everywhere and very little snow left.  As we walked around Shipley Park to Osborne's Pond, we were forced to splash through puddles, slush, mud and worse!  When we got to Osborne's Pond, the overflows which are normally fairly dry, were gushing with water.

Built to feed the old canal network this reservoir still overflows into a concrete channel which drops down to the lower reservoir known as Coppice Lake.  Through the trees the geese and ducks were making a lot of noise, unable to waddle up the channel due to the torrent rushing down.  A few patches of snow were clinging to the undergrowth, but not for much longer with the temperature still climbing.

Osborne's Pond itself was fairly peaceful, although the coots were still arguing among themselves.  A lone, male Goosander was swimming about in the distance too.  Beautiful in the long-awaited sunshine.