Sudden warm up to around 60 degrees! Wow that feels good after a bitter cold weekend. I have clear edges on the pond and a big mass of floating ice about 4-5" thick. I chopped a path out until the water would go over my knee boots. As I chopped I was amazed to find brilliant green under the ice. Mats of FA in the shallows. How does it survive over the winter under ice so well? Maybe just enough light coming through?

I was hoping to install my duck box pipe while standing on the ice but didn't get to it in time and now I have to wade. I want to move the box to the opposite shore so that the opening faces West. Right behind the new location on shore is a couple of spruce trees so it should give a feeling of protection hopefully. I pounded an old trampoline netting galvanized 1" pipe I had in the basement till it was sunk with the top flush with the water line. (about 24" off bottom) My pond is about 2 feet low right now so this way if I keep the pipe in we won't hit it while ice skating and as the end of skating comes and the water levels drop hopefully I can find the pipe again.

I slid the 2" PVC pipe that holds the DuckHut on it over the pipe and then hung on it and twisted it a few more times to try to get it to embed in the bottom so it doesn't rotate too much on the metal pipe. The goal would be to reuse the mounting pipe if I can mark it with paint in the future or find a way to find it as the ice melts in future springs

Last year I had pounded it on a wolmanized 2x2 wood post which was such a tight fit that I couldn't get the PVC pipe back off the wood. Probably the wood swelled with the water too making it expand. I had to rock the PVC till I busted the wolmanized. I ended up drilling out as much of the left over wood as I could from the bottom side of the PVC pipe and then pounded what was left back up inside the pole so it was out of the way.

We will have a cool down and around freezing at night (Glad for that as we are not doing well with maple syrup this season yet, another post for another time) so the floating ice will probably stick around for a bit yet.

Hoping to have an interested Wood duck pair stop by this year!!