This is a piece on the arrival of spring that I wrote for community magazine, The Local Look
Looking back through the pages of my diary from the last few years, the arrival of spring in Charlcombe Valley is characterised by first encounters and new arrivals.
After the relative quietness and limited colour palettes of the long winter months I can feel a palpable sense of anticipation in the changing of the seasonal guard. With the lengthening of the days and the temperatures rising, the natural world is readying itself for a riot of colour and a wall of sound.
It’s not always plain sailing with the potential for an unexpected cold snap or the intensity of an April shower. But as writer Laurie Lee captures beautifully, it is a time of ‘false starts, expectations, deferred hopes, and final showers of glory’.
Walking along Charlcombe Lane, or meandering across the fields, on a fine spring day, you feel as though you are miles from anywhere. These are the moments that you realise how important being in nature is for your well-being, whether taking the time to notice a robin sing or a zig-zagging bumblebee.
Hearing my first chiffchaff of the year with its unmistakeable ‘chiffchaff, chiffchaff’ call will always stop me in my tracks. I’ll try to make out this small bird, that has travelled thousands of miles to its spring and summer residency, in the canopy of a tree. Swifts, swallows and house martins will follow shortly as the clocks change and we head into April.
The delicate white flowers of the blackthorn and hawthorn will add a wonderful fragility to hedgerows as though dabbed in by an impressionist painter. Songbirds, including blue tits and wrens, will dart between these linear habitats, looking for a desirable spot for a nest, anxious to avoid the unwanted gaze of a hovering sparrowhawk. Gaps in drystone walls or an old alarm on the side of a building can also be an attractive spot to bring up a family.
My seasonal highlight is the first sighting of butterflies, brimstones and small tortoiseshells, orange tips and red admirals. Their arrival is a symbol of the welcome warmer days to come.
bathmic 