Finally we've embarked into the long journey leading from late-late winter into early spring. In Ottawa, early spring resembles nothing like the early spring experienced in other parts of the world, even those surrounded by mountains which have already long shed their winter mantles of snow and ice descending to the valleys below, releasing them from their long winter slumber, nourishing the landscape into vibrant greens with the pop-up surprise of spring-blooming flowers of exquisite beauty.

In this region of the world we wait a lot longer for those welcome surprises convincing us that winter has begrudgingly been persuaded to wave us goodbye for another season. But yesterday's morning rain following the all-day rain of the day before has begun the serious snowmelt, and the prevailing temperatures for the coming week are all above freezing. Even some sun muscled through the grey clouds of yesterday afternoon.

Our way to the ravine entrance was punctuated by a few smiling neighbourly faces, outdoors for a change. Jean-Guy seemed ecstatic that he could once again begin washing his car in the driveway, a constant preoccupation with him, churlishly interrupted by winter.

And in the ravine the creek is swollen and running tempestuously down to the Ottawa River on its long, releasing journey from freezeup to thaw. The sound and sight of birds, absent for much of the winter, has now resumed. Not that we don't see and hear them during the winter months, but then it is more a random, episodic appearance; now it will become constant as our feathered neighbours celebrate incoming spring.

A pair of pileated woodpeckers was heard calling raucously through the ravine, hammering on trees in search of the beetle larvae they harbour, and crows were mobbing somewhere; possibly surrounding an owl impervious to their exhibition of silly nonsense, not disposed to move from his perch, while the crows shriek hysterically around him. Chickadees are flocking and flickering among tree branches, followed as usual by a nuthatch. And streaks of crimson are seen swifting across the trails as cardinals resume their usual sighted activities with blissful paeans to spring.