Spring

A beautiful cloudless spring morning for my country park walk before breakfast. A willow warbler has joined the park chorus.

The morning led to a beautiful day and I tagged along with Linda on a garden bumble bee survey.

Dark-edged bee flies were very busy. Same for tawny mining bees. Queen bumble bees tumbled in the dried leaves and tussocks of grass prospecting for suitable nest sites. Worker bees of common carder and red-tailed bumblebees indicated that nests had been successfully founded and worker bees bred. Our feral honey bee colony has made it through the winter and the numbers of workers appear to be on the rise.

Which four-year-old would be more interested in snakehead fritillaries than the work of the Easter bunny?

Abundant flowers.

Native primroses. My favourites..

Native primrose in their pomp now.

Cowslips spreading across the meadow and opening their trumpets for business.

A garden bumblebee enjoys the flowering cowslips.

A self-seeded flowering currant at the back of George’s pond attracted bee-flies and a peacock butterfly.

A male dark-edged bee fly uses its long proboscis to enter the long trumpets of the flowering red currant flowers..

The evening was especially still, so no hardship to walk the garden at dusk with the bat detector. Noctule and soprano pipistrelle had single records. Twenty five common pipistrelle must be a garden record.

The dry spell has continued but no impact on food production from the vegetable garden with 16kgs harvested since the beginning of March.

Forced Timperley early rhubarb and purple-sprouting brocolli cropping well.

Hawk-eyed Linda spotted a female slow worm.

A well-concealed female slow worm..