CHANGE OF RABBIT COLOR

        Since the rabbits hang around my yard quite a bit , I get to make interesting observations and then curiosity makes me look things up. This last while one animal has made my yard his/her location for the day. They are not very active in the day as they rest  and groom.

       So two weeks ago I started noticing small changes in color of the rabbit's coat. All winter the jack rabbits have had a very thick white coat. The white coat is great as it provides warmth and camouflage in the winter snow.

      So I got thinking about what makes the process happen. It's primarily a molting process. The photo period provides the start  of the molting process. So changing light causes hormones to do their work. Biology  continues the process.

      So now the big white coat is falling off. I find large tufts of white fur around my yard. A new summer coat is growing in which will be a brown/gray which provides camouflage in a summer environment. It is also much cooler and prevents the  animal from overheating.

     The change in molt is slow but is never the less  happening.

FIRST DAY OF SPRING.

          So here we  are on the supposed first day of spring. It's a little more complicated. March 17 gave us very close the equal day and night. 

        So I'll give you the sunrise and sunset for today.  The sun rose at 7:35 am and sets at 7:50 PM . The day length is 12 hours, 15 minutes and 38 seconds.  The actual spring is when the sun crosses to the north side of the equator.

      However ,I'll take the first day of spring as I'm hoping for warmer weather.

      We still have lots of snow and all lakes are frozen as well as most rivers. However , at this time of year things start melting very rapidly.

      Birds are coming back. A few crows have been here for about two weeks. We do have some crows that over winter here but I didn't see any this winter. Geese have arrived. I haven't been out where I would see more birds.

     So I'm looking forward to better days.

     Some how or other my camera didn't seem to work or was it the photographer as I didn't get any photos.

CANADA GEESE

    Yesterday morning, I saw several flocks of Canada geese fly over. We don't have any open water except for some parts of rivers. Now, in some fields the snow is gone and they could feed.

    Nevertheless, they are probably not going to land here and stay. No, the first geese here are going on. Water isn't open here and they are flying further north, What gives?

   Well, some Canada geese fly to lakes on the arctic coast.  They stay  on the ice for six to eight weeks. They eat  debris on the ice from material that has blown on the ice during the winter. There are also insects on the ice at that time of year. There will be fresh water on top of the ice.

   When most of the snow  and ice have melted they will nest. 

   Now Innuit hunters take advantage of this situation and harvest large numbers of geese. They use white material to make a blind that allows them to move. They are a able to harvest many geese. Meat and down it valuable at that time. These days hunters fly out and make a camp and stay a few days. People who have permanent jobs go on these hunts.  

      I don't know about their behavior in the fall. I do know that it's pretty cool when flying, to look down and see flocks of geese below you.

NOISE

      A  couple mornings ago I was in the back of the house and heard a very loud strange noise. I thought that it must be something outside so I ran to the back door to open it and see if the noise came from outside. As soon as I got to the back door I knew the noise was coming from in the house. More than that it came from downstairs.

      I bounced down the stairs and was getting closer to the noise. The noise came from under the stairwell and there I found my sump pump running. Funny thing but there was no water in the sump. It's winter and we don't have water out side. Well,  my brain told me to pull the plug out for the sump pump and the noise stopped immediately.

    Well.  I still had  to find out why the  sump pump suddenly started  running. Sump pumps don't pump snow.

   I soon found out that the cable holding the floats had rusted and broke. 

    However, I will fix my sump pump now so it's ready for any water in the spring or summer

SNOW

     Yesterday we had about four or five cm of snow. That's not much but we don't get a lot of snow. 

The snow was powder so it was fluffy and dry. It was easy to shovel as it was light. Now it was about minus 8 below. So this would be winter snow as compared to spring snow which is heavy and wet.

      Now' just recently I transferred my photos from an old hard drive to a memory stick. There were  close to 8000 photos, It was a good time to cull some photos. I discarded about 4000 photos, Many photos were snow photos. It looked like I never saw a snow flake I didn't like and by the way, I didn't take any snow photos yesterday.

        I had never transferred  anything to a memory stick so it was a bit of a surprise, I downloaded 6 files and then it said it was downloading 4441 photos! When It was finished I looked at what I had. I thought they were all jumbled up. As with any problem like this I waited a couple of days before I went back to the photos. Upon inspection , I found that the photos were in exactly the order they had been in.

     Since I did not make files the computer filed them by date. 

   I do have a few things to learn.

A VISIT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM

•       In the past ten days the micro manager and I have caught one of he most miserable head colds we've ever had. I've been retired for 28 years and have rarely had a head cold. We have no idea where we picked it up. We think it may have been in the hospital that the micro Manager had her cataract surgery,
•       But that isn't what this post is about. Yesterday afternoon the Micro Manager had a coughing spell that was alarming. We decided  to  go to the emergency rather than wait until when she  got sicker.
•        We got to emergency about 6:30. PM
•      We had been told that there was a wait of about 3 and a half hours. At 10 I asked how long we still had to wait. Well there were four people ahead of us. How long would that take? Well it took until one AM for us to get in a room. It took another hour to see a doctor  
•      So we got out of the treatment area about 2 AM. We got home just before  3 AM and he did not prescribe anything for us to do.

              We got home just before 3 AM. That's six  hours for two elderly people to wait around. Apparently with this bug you just have to tough it out as there isn't anything to treat it.

MARCH WEATHER

       Here in Central Alberta, Canada, March is considered to be a spring month although with extremes.

       Today was a good example. When I got up today there was light rain. It was about plus 2 C. The rain soon stopped and the wind started. Then snow flurries occurred. The rain lasted about 30 minutes. Just enough to make things wet. The light snow lasted about 60 minutes.  

      March can be very windy. Weather systems go through quickly. We tend to get much precipitation in March.

      So today was a day that's quite common in March. You feel the warmth from the sun ,but the wind makes it feel cold. 

      So what will tomorrow bring? It's supposed to get cold tomorrow.