Sunshine on Blean

Half-day today. VERY full-on morning but I got away from the practice by about 2:15. Walked home doing a couple of odd-jobs on the way. Then took the dogs to Blean woods.

It was lovely; warm and sunny with a very light breeze. Lots of wildflowers; especially primroses, ladies smock, wood anemonies and dog-violets. Also, quite a lot of Peacock butterflies and, to my amazement, quite a few Commas. I nearly blipped a Comma butterfly, simply to prove what I'd seen, but the image was not a very good one.

The is one of the broad rides through the mixed oak, birch, beech and hazel of Blean wood. The rides are cut each autumn to encourage wild flowers, especially cow-wheat, which is a food plant for the heath fritillary - a rare butterfly which found in great abundance here - but almost entirely absent from the rest of the UK. The birch and hazel is coppiced; when it regrows it provides a very sought-after habitat for nightingales - which are common in Blean too. I haven't yet heard a nightingale but there were lots of birds about this afternoon including woodpeckers drumming, great-tits chiding and chiff-chaff, who of course were chiff-chaffing!

It's wonderful that the Spring is here, the clocks have gone forward and everything is bursting into life. We had a long long long wet Autumn but did we have a Winter?