Signs of Spring

They say that yesterday was the warmest day of the year. It was certainly bright when I visited the Nature Area mid-morning. A slight mist hung in the air as the sun burnt off the dew. A fresh green groundcover of young cow parsley, hogweed, nettles, arum lilies, docks, and cleavers now carpet the damp earth along with an abundance of moss that has grown during the wet winter. Trees and shrubs are beginning to show fat buds. The hawthorn leaves are opening already.

Yellow flowers of dandelions, primroses, and lesser celandines make a bright splash of colour – the snowdrops are long over. There is still no sign of the many bluebells we planted last November, but there are already some unopened white flower on the wild garlic we put in only a few weeks ago. The blackthorn is beginning to bloom.

While the farmer drove his tractor up and down, muckspreading in the neighbouring field, the birds sang, a pheasant chilled out on a tree stump, and a grey squirrel tried desperately to bite into a conker. An overwintered red admiral and a couple of brimstone butterflies were looking for nectar; spiders lurked in dew-dropped webs; and a seven-spot ladybird hunted for prey. With a visiting pair of mallard ducks on the pond, no doubt hoping to eat the frogspawn and newly hatched tadpoles in the water, I felt that we were beginning to reap the rewards of the hard work in rewilding our local nature area.