Winter is over, it's official. Well it is as far as I'm concerned anyway. Temperatures had risen to 13 degrees by the time I set foot out of the house, positively balmy by recent standards.
So the new game is searching for spring. I find myself doing this every year, and usually from mid-February.
The most obvious sign is birdsong. The cold weather had suppressed it over the last week, so the singing Skylarks, Robins, and Dunnocks felt like true harbingers of spring (even though they had all been singing on milder days in January). Perhaps a singing Great Tit was a better indicator, and I also recorded a singing Linnet for the first time this year.
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| The Linnet |
Not convinced? Ok let's consider insects. The bee-hives were abuzz with activity, and I saw several other "honey-bee types" in the hedgerow along the Morton Brook.
Back to birds. Buzzards were circling in typical fashion, marking out their territory for another year, but again you could argue they have been doing that for several weeks.
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| Common Buzzard soaring |
My main hope was the flash field. However, the ponds and pools I walked past on the way all had at least some ice covering, and the same was true of the nearest flash. At least the furthest flash was ice-free and had been repopulated by 24 Teal, 21 Mallard, and a Little Egret, while 16 Lapwings were also still present. On the nearer flash a small party of Black-headed Gulls included one that had developed its summer-plumaged chocolate-brown head.
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| Black-headed Gulls |
Grasping at straws now. At least my doom-laden comment in my last post about Stonechats was proved completely wrong. They haven't moved on (or died), and I found three in the weedy field followed by another at the dragonfly pools.
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| Stonechat - female |
The sun shone throughout the visit, and although the evidence for it may be thin, spring is just around the corner.
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