Sunday 28th April was a fine spring day after a slight frost. Signs of spring after such a long wait and several false starts are appearing in leaps and bounds. The most colourful heralds of spring are the butterflies and it was very fortunate that a Comma butterfly chose a warm sheltered area of the river bank amongst last years dried out nettle stalks to bask for a while.
Normally restless and wary the Comma butterfly needed time to warm up
in the sun on the river bank after a cold and frosty night.
Many birds were singing and setting up nests or had already built nests along the banks.
The popularity of the river environment naturally attracts predators too.
Looking down onto the water, one such skilled hunter suddenly appeared, flying very low over the water following the river course - a female Sparrowhawk, silent and generating no alarm calls from the numerous inhabitants of the banks - somewhere downstream it will make a dash for an unwary bird
of any size even a woodpigeon taking a bath could be the chosen prey.
The fields, in the recent past lying for so long uncultivated and dead, any growth soaked and smothered in herbicides but with good mature hedgerows surviving, have this spring, as soon as they became less waterlogged, been ploughed, tilled and sown with wheat. Today sprouting shoots had turned these fields green again. Some of the hedgerows have been partially trimmed in parts and others left to blossom.
Along the river a fine view of whitethroats, one amongst the old nettle stalks on the bank, bouncing up in its display flight, two more foraging amongst the Blackthorn blossom and others flitting and bouncing above the brambles and singing, joined by a fresh Peacock butterfly nectaring on the blossom and warming up in the sun. Wrens were trying to out-sing the warblers but the warblers were winning with a fine singing sedge warbler and a willow warbler in the chorus but the chiffchaffs were the most numerous and heard continuously. Two blackcaps chose more isolated location in which to sing their varied and beautiful songs. A song thrush was also singing, together with nearby blackbirds. Others were quiet, carrying beaks full of nesting material - they outnumbered robins today but the latter were still singing strongly whilst dunnocks added their tuneful songs from high perches in the trees.
Greenfinches, great tits and blue tits were calling too and even a coal tit was heard amongst the pines that also held a foraging goldcrest. House sparrows were chattering as they do all year round but males adding a rather plain persistent breeding call now. Long-tailed tits were very quiet, busy nesting, careful not to attract attention whilst chaffinches did the opposite and goldfinches sang from under the cover of ivy where they roost and retreat if the weather is cold. A nuthatch was seen amongst the trees collecting food, silently. From out of nowhere a large flock of herring gulls descended onto the field, a single lesser black-backed gull amongst them and on the perimeter a single magpie and a few woodpigeons and crows waited. A cock pheasant marched purposefully along the fence at the margin.
The river was flowing swiftly and clearer than it has been all winter and it was getting colder fast with an old willow creaking in the wind when two mallard flew over the river and a flash of bright yellow and dippy flight gave away a smart grey wagtail darting along the river.
Looking up, hoping to see a buzzard I saw instead a kestrel making a sweeping glide over the river, its fine colouring showing brightly as it turned.
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