A spring morning at the swamp

I headed out at five in the morning. Just as the sun was rising I was at the end of the dirt road and started to walk towards my hide. At first the going was nice and light, there was either clear ground or snow with a nice icy crust to make walking easy in the forest. Once I got to the swamp, things changed completely. With the exception of a few small shady spots, all the snow and ice on the swamp had melted and there was plenty of water everywhere. Step by step I continued forward, eventhough I kept sinking about knee deep with every step. Along the way I stopped to look and listen at the sights and sounds of spring. A lonely crane was calling out near my route to the hide:
As usual, the crane was rather far away and as I kept moving, eventhough away from the bird, it took to its wings and flew away:
Eventually I arrived at the and as I had suspected, the tiedowns had let go. As the snow and the surface of the swamp had melted, the attachments had come loose. Luckily I had made a backup tiedown to a tiny pine and this had stopped the hide from being flown completely away. Eventhough the tent was lying on its side in the water, looking all battered and beaten, nothing was broken:
I took a few landscape -type pictures, mainly as a memento for myself of how wet everything was this time around:
The pair of swans that were close to the hide had received some company since my last visit:
I loaded the hide up and started to head back. The weight of the hide forced me to take short stops to rest along the way. I used the breaks to take some pictures. On one of my stops some calls from afar caught my attention. It took me some time to locate the source of the sounds, but I finally spotted four cranes making quite some noise between the trees close to the edge of the swamp:
The sun was out and heated the air fast and pulling the hide along in the soft and uneven surface of the swamp got me sweating quickly. Even with the heat of the sun, there were still some spots of terrain that were rather cold:
On my way back to the car the sun had heated the edge of the forrest so much, that I managed to take my first butterfly pictures of the year:
This one was a rather rough trip, but now the hide is at home drying and waiting for coming photography trips to the boonies.

Oops! Mistake!

I obviously didn't think things thru when I set up my hide. Digging a hole in the snow for it came out of memory, it worked well a year ago. Big mistake! I didn't take into account the difference in snow depth and type at all. This time, all the melting snow filled my hole with water. Lucky enough I went to take a look at the place during the day and did not stumble into the hide in darkness to wait for sunrise. It would have been a wet and cold wait. The good thing is that the bottom construction of my hide actually floats, so it had lifted the whole system up as the water level rose. The foxhole looked like this after I had lifted the hide out:
There seemed to be a lot of water underneath the snow in this particular part of the swamp and I am wondering how things will develop as spring progresses. I hope I will not end up swimming with my photography gear. I moved the hide a bit and set it on top of the snow this time.
Judging by the markings in the snow, the grouses have begun mating season:
Not much of a picture, but the imprints in the snow are grouse tracks and the feathers indicate that some kind of a confrontation had occured. My hide seems to be at a rather good spot, but one can never be sure.