27/4/14

Returning from holiday to a beautiful sunny day and spring has erupted while we have been away. Spring smells fresh and there is a smell of sawn wood, less obvious than the pine smell earlier, a softer scent of broom mingles with them. The soft deep green brushes are covered in vivid yellow pea flowers and they line the drove. Walking through a clearing I catch the nutty smell which I don’t instantly recognise but when I look up I realise it is hawthorn. Such a familiar smell; one that I love, but unlike the lilac which I gather to fill as many vases as possible, I have never brought hawthorn blossom into the house. It is reputed to be unlucky and my mother firmly believes that every time we picked it she went into hospital. It is colloquially referred to as May. In the north it does flower in May but here the creamy clusters smother the hedgerows from April, overhanging roadside verges full of the white froth of Queen Anne’s Lace. Spring hedgerows are so exuberant.

In the forest the beeches have transformed themselves in our absence. The sharp pointed buds gradually fatten until they can no longer keep back the leaves which open fan-like to become the softest of any spring leaves. The branches are covered in flounces of pale silk which flutter in the breeze. It is only when they are new that the leaves feel like tissue. As they mature they become darker and stiffer, crowding all light out from anything that tries to grow beneath them. At this time of year the light trickles through and on bright days they are almost translucent.

Along the side of the tracks bracken fronds are spiking up through the lush grass. They emerge the shape of shepherds crooks but as the hairy stems grow taller the leaf clusters make me think of well-ordered caterpillars balancing ,waiting for permission to unfurl their wings into leaves. Spring flowers are hiding in the grass too. Tiny specks of blue field speedwell, occasional purple spring vetch  and the criss-cross leaves of hairy tare with white flowers so small you can only see them if you bend down and peer closely. Last year they did not appear until a week or so later.

I hear a woodlark but without my binoculars I cannot see it. I also hear a cuckoo in the distance towards the railway line. They say that you always hear a cuckoo in the same place every year. I have for the last four years but I don’t find it surprising as I walk the same place every year and the cuckoo probably comes back. I heard on the radio that cuckoo named after Chris Packham is the longest one being tracked. It is still producing signals after three years.

When I return Jazz home and tell his owner that I have heard a cuckoo in the forest he says “That’s late. I usually hear them at the end of March. Last year I rang the RSPB and they told me it wasn’t unusual as they have recorded them as early as March 10^th.”