It is not only the early-morning 'welcome spring' songs we hear from returning robins and newly-enthused cardinals that have finally convinced us winter is waning and spring is winning, but the sounds of geese in their eternal 'victory'-shaped formations speeding across the sky, their presence the assurance we've been looking for. I tried to capture the views we had of them in flight yesterday as we headed up our street toward the ravine entrance, but was entirely unsuccessful.

On our ravine circuit yesterday afternoon it was clear enough, under a dense cloud cover, that the snow is slowly disintegrating. Slowly being the operative observation here. But there are areas, particularly around trees, where 'wells' of dark forest floor are emerging, sometimes full of snow meltwater. And uphill climbs where the sun can penetrate at times during the day, that become slush and others where the ice layer on the trails are fully revealed.

In the forest there's a prevalence of 'dusk' given the density of the trees, even when the forest canopy is bare during the winter months, when an overcast day comes along. We're so accustomed to bright, sunny days that when that gloom descends in the forest, the landscape changes completely. There is a beauty of its own on such dark days when you're immersed in a woodland city. An intrigue of nature afoot.

There is also a greater presence of birds happy to flit about the trees, identifying themselves by the quality of their songs. An increase in the sightings of red squirrels, which it seems to us, prepare for winter far more appropriately than their larger grey and black cousins.

Jackie and Jillie are forever on the lookout for what they must consider to be edible prizes, but which we recognize as twigs and pieces of bark and needles that the trees have shed and the snowmelt is newly revealing. They scoop up these treats and chew them while we're loping along the trails; no amount of censure from us has ever persuaded these two little dogs that this kind of detritus is not the best thing for their digestive tracts. Occasionally, as a result, they'll feel ill afterward and choose to miss a regular meal.

We can now see, from day to day, the difference in the melting snowpack. We're going out to the ravine now in temperature highs of 2C, relatively balmy, but since the ground remains frozen and the forest floor still deep in snow in most places, cold radiates off it, and we can feel the contrast between that ambient cold and the warmth we feel when the sun is full out and makes its way through the denuded forest canopy.