Sunny, and warm in sheltered spots, without wind.

Today's blip makes an interesting pair with the blip from the 8th April.
That was taken from close to the white house in this picture, looking towards where I am standing today. As you can see there's still plenty of ice on the lake. The snow in the foreground is a good medium for showing up the forest shadows of those fir trees.
Another lovely day today, once the initial chilly greyness was swept away by the sun. We did a good walk and then spent time in the garden.
The weather seemed to excite the birds and we saw big flocks of swans, and of cranes, taking to the sky. They flew around, screeching at each other and then the flocks broke up. Some flew onwards and disappeared, others came around and landed again. I think the warm sun gave some good thermals and this lured the birds up, but once they got a couple of hundred meters above the trees the strong wind broke up the thermals and confused the flocks.
We weren't confused - we went home for a cup of tea.