Early Hints of Spring

Walking around town on a sunny war mid-50s February day early hints of spring were everywhere. Oregon snowpack is ~30% of average and thankfully a big rain storm is heading this way next week, but things still seem early this year. (Remember opening an image shows better resolution – the flowers especially)

Near home flowers blooming, trees starting to bloom …

If the flowers didn’t convince you, how about great blue herons building nests in a new roosting tree? (for some reason they abandoned the previous one about 100 yards away; the new tree suffers way less human traffic). Water birds were strutting their stuff working to get a girl. A jay on the ground while the audience was in the bush – she didn’t seem impressed with his ground game.

Finally this lone great blue heron found a fishing hole where the Mill Race is damned up; the red water plant / algae (?) was everywhere on the Mill Race.