Spring Prologue

Whanne that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote

Not much has changed since Chaucer’s day; April still brings the rain though whether it will be enough to pierce the current drought is debatable.  In the  fourteenth century, it was more about the crops failing than not being able to wash the car at the week-end.

A break in the downpour allowed a visit to Pease Dean, a deep ravine that defeated invading armies for centuries until it was crossed in 1786 by what was, in the eighteenth century, the highest bridge in Europe.   It still stands as a tribute to its builders carrying massive articulated lorries, unforeseen in the time of drays and coaches.

The dean is home to a huge variety of  woodland plants including the  bluebell, the English variety, with its coy, drooping  flower, said to hang thus to protect the pollen from the rain, unlike it  more upright Spanish cousin who didn’t need to develop this trait.

Unfortunately, the Spaniard is so widespread that hybrids are common and neither has the fragrance of the native species.  The bluebell like wood sorrel and ransomes or wild garlic is an indicator species showing the age of a wood.

 The rare Northern brown Argus butterfly can be found here but it is too early yet to see them so I settled for a commoner but still beautiful Peacock

And smalle fowles maken melodye

The dean was full of the song of warblers and tits as well as the harsh cackle of magpies and the omnipresent coo-cooing of wood pigeons. Trying to get a shot of a dipper, I made the mistake of crossing the burn by way of some stones.  Wet and slippery with the rains, they proved treacherous underfoot and I ended up in the burn.   As I returned home soaked through, LotH pointed out that it is more than half a century since I had licence to play in burns and I must learn, even at this late stage, to act my age and not my shoe size.

The terns are back in the bay, having completed their epic journey to Antarctica and back.   I watched them fishing like children ducking for apples.  Graceful and fast they are the “swallows of the sea”    Their terrestrial counterparts, the swallows, should be appearing within the next week.   Year upon year,theycome winging in, usually within twenty four hours of the last arrival date.   
They amaze me.   I can never take their sight for granted. 

 I hope the weather improves for them.

Post script 
The first swallow has indeed arrived and the cuckoo flowers have bloomed ...and still...
... the rain it raineth every day
... as in the fourteenth, so in the sixteenth and the twenty first centuries
... the uncertain glory of an April day

Doing the rounds

A couple of days ago, I met Toad making his way up the garden path. Rescued from a dustbin a few years back, he has since lived in the garden and only appears in the spring when he seems to want to migrate somewhere. To avoid him getting flattened of the road, a fate common to many of his kind, I took him to a neighbouring pond to see if that would satisfy his wanderlust.

Today, I came across one of his erstwhile companions, Mole, busy snuffling about in the grass beside a local walk presumably looking to set up home

.

Unfortunately, the third member of the trio is now not so common. Ratty, the water vole, is on the endangered list. I have caught the occasional glimpse by the burn but the only time I ever got close was to a corpse, neatly dissected by, perhaps, a heron. It looked like a big hamster.

Odd how things get the wrong name, Ratty wasn’t a rat; hedge sparrows aren’t sparrows and the dames violets, that are coming into flower, aren’t violets. They may not even be violet coloured, at least the ones by the beach path weren’t. They were white but they smell like violets…or, at least their scent is what people think violets smell like …like those little purple sweets that you used to get…cachous, I think they were called.

I went for a stroll to a little water meadow surrounded by whins with their own, wonderful coconut scent to see if I could find any traces of the trio’s big chum, Badger, but the sett seem to be deserted, however, another older one, close to the village seems to be getting a remake… or a fox has taken it over. Certainly, there seems to be active digging going on.

The whirligig beetles on the pond in the meadow were spinning round in shiny arabesques. Why? I wondered, but then much of what we do seems, and probably is, as pointless and time-consuming as the beetles’ endless circling. Their activities must confer some advantage, though, making it more difficult for predators, perhaps, for Nature and evolution do not allow pointless expenditure of energy. Only humans are permitted that self indulgence as anyone who has followed Scotland at rugby for the past few seasons will know.