Sunshine

The sunshine and warmth is certainly making it feel like spring and the flora and fauna are responding.  Peacock and Comma butterflies were out but refusing to settle for any attempt at a photograph.  Queen bees searching for a nesting site were no better, there one second, gone the next!  Even the hive bees were flying quickly making a photograph a little difficult.  

We have a nest box with a camera fitted so that we can watch the developments if a bird decides to nest in it.  It is shown live on the screen in the Field Centre.  At the minute there is a Blue Tit visiting the box, who does not, strongly does not, like the material in the nest box!  She chooses a piece and then pulls and twists it until it is lose, then removes it. 

Flowers are opening their buds.  Lesser Celandines kept us entertained last spring as we counted the number of petals as they can vary.  It is rather compulsive and so far there have been flowers with eight or ten petals.  We'll keep counting!

Barren Strawberries showed their tiny white flowers quite early in the month but then appeared to disappear.  Now their flowers are covering areas in white blossom.

Common Dog Violets always flower first on the bank on the far moor, which they did, but others have now caught up.