May is Out...

...or at least there are flowers on one particular Hawthorn, a red flowered tree in Kings Road, Plymouth, which always seems to be a few weeks in advance of the rest. People are casting clouts all over the place - the sun is shining, true, but the wind's still cold and the temperature in no way justifies the shorts and suntops I am seeing all over the place. The nearest I will get to 'summer' clothes for a while is the replacement of the woolly hat by a cotton one and a slightly thinner fleece!

The last few days have been wonderfully springlike. Every day there is more and more evidence of the changing season - that Hawthorn is a case in point, but it is happening everywhere. This year, as so often before, I promised myself that I would faithfully record the 'firsts' of spring, but as usual much of it has got away from me and caught me by surprise. There are bluebells now on the sunnier hedgebanks, although not yet in the woods. The hedges are white with blackthorn blossom, gardens pink with flowering cherries. The smallest wild cherry in the coombe, not much taller than I am, is already in bloom, as is the despised cherry laurel. Primroses, celandines, violets, campion, are all competing with the ramsons for ground space among the trees. Cuckoo-pint has come up overnight, seemingly.

One 'first' this afternoon - the first lizard I have seen in the wild in England. A male common lizard walked across the path in front of me in Seaton Valley and I was able to follow its movements for quite a while through the undergrowth. It can only recently have come out of hibernation.

It's almost midnight, and there has just been some consideable commotion outside in the coombe. First a jackdaw started chattering and scolding, then a female tawny owl screeched back. The jackdaw and the owl argued for a minute or two (I guess the owl woke the jackdaw up, rather than the other way round). Now the male and female owls are calling to each other up and down the coombe.

I don't know where the sparrows are nesting this year - not in the escallonia, or at least not yet, and not in the eaves and soffits of the empty house in Frobisher Drive because it isn't empty any more and it's all been repaired. They still seem to be going round in groups at the moment, although most of the other birds I see are courting or fighting. Blackbirds are being particularly aggressive at the moment. I keep seeing one blackbird which is brown but with a bright orange beak - is it male or female? No clue in any of my books...

Butterfly Bonanza

After two days of almost solid rain, today is windy with short heavy showers but sunshine in between. Somehow some sort of a signal must have been put out to the butterfly pupae, because the air is thick with small white butterflies. They are in the woods, in the gardens, and most especially in the buddleias on the edge of the path, hundreds of them. How do they all emerge at the same time like that?

More Signs of Autumn

I walked through the valley from Hessenford to Seaton this afternoon in the beautiful summer weather and found myself crunching through a thick layer of dry discarded sycamore leaves. Since last week, when I noticed some brown spotted leaves on some of the trees, we have a situation where many of the trees are already bare. Is it just that they think it's almost winter, or is something else? It's only the sycamores, luckily, not any of the other trees, but it's still very odd.

The beach at Seaton has been cleaned up a bit, although there are still a few piles of rotting kelp here and there, and there were lots of people on the beach - even some in the water, although most of them were wearing wet suits. We had a pleasant couple of hours sitting on the terrace at Downderry and just watching the world go by.

Tilly and the Blue Tit

After yesterday's relentless rain today was brighter - golden in the early morning, as is often the case here, then drizzly around lunchtime and dry but greyish later.

Ty and I went down the coombe in the afternoon, and in passing we collected his friend Tilly, who at 9 months old is already bigger than he is and not yet particularly obedient, being fast, excitable and headstrong as all collies are at that age. We went down the coombe then back up and crossed over to the other side, back down to the creek and back up again, which certainly tires me out even if it doesn't affect the dogs.

When we were almost back I called Tilly and got no response at all; I could see bushes shaking above the cow parsley, but I couldn't actually see the dog so I went back to investigate. In among the long grass, protesting VERY loudly, was a just fledged blue tit. Tilly didn't know what to make of it at all, but it was making noises like a squeaky toy so she was nosing at it gently and it was rolling/tumbling down the slope. I grabbed the dog with one hand and scooped up the fledgling with the other. Held on my palm well above dog height it immediately calmed down and shut up. I could see that it was unharmed, if a tiny bit bedraggled. While I was still debating whether to try and find the nest, just put it back on the nearest branch or take it home to keep an eye on (no! very naughty!) it made my mind up for me by taking off in a flapping flurry. Not very efficiently, it managed about six feet before it ended up back on the ground, but that is normal for a first or second flight so I took the dogs well away and left it to its own devices.

This was the first blue tit fledgling I've seen this year. I don't know whether Tilly knocked it out of its nest or found it on the ground or a low branch, but I didn't want to investigate while she was still around. I'll go back tomorrow to see what's what.

Ringed by Wrens

As I walked up through the coombe this morning, a wren flew across the path just in front of me and perched on a nearby branch. I stopped to look at it more closely and became aware that there were at least seven or eight wrens surrounding me, all churring away to each other. Although I could hear them very clearly (such a loud noise for such a small bird) I could only see the one, but it seemed that the family were both warning each other about the intruder (me) and reassuring each other that back up was available - or perhaps they were just telling the wanderer to get back over his own side of the path!