Searching for spring

As you see from the photo there is still plenty of snow left, though it is melting fairly rapidly just now. Along the edges of the road, especially when the side of the road looks south, the snow has melted away and a coltsfoot or two pokes through the dead brown grass. In the forest there are the sunnier spots where the first Anemone hepatica, liverwort, Sw - blåsippa, are popping into flower for the first time this year.
When we set out on our walk today I was definitely searching for spring; I was determined to find some flowers to show in today's blip. However, shortly after I'd found a couple of tiny yellow coltsfoot flowers there was a cacophony from just along the road and I saw the pictured geese, flying very low but climbing as they left our frozen lake.
I suspect they'd also been looking for the spring, and had been heading for a favourite spot on the lake and at the last moment realised all was still frozen! They decided to look for somewhere with water available, instead of landing on the ice. There was a lot of honking and a certain amount of confusion - you'll notice they are hardly in their usual perfect V - so I'm not sure they were all agreed on this plan!
Anyway, no-one seemed to want to be left alone on the ice and when I last saw them they were headed for the coast in a more sorted formation.
We'd been wielding crowbar and axe earlier, removing the ice from our path. Now there is an ice-free path from our front door to the car, and only a couple of metres of icy path between us and the cellar. Spring is definitely on the way!