Monday 20 February 2017

The Year Begins

At last, my patience (what patience? It's only February - Ed.) has been rewarded and I've seen my first butterfly of the year. I was taking a hopeful stroll around a local nature reserve called Wilderness Island - which was indeed a tangled wilderness when I was a boy but has since been tamed and cleared sufficiently to provide a habitat for a good range of wildlife, from bats to butterflies. The sun was out, there was a vernal warmth in the air - and there, on a brisk questing flight among the trees, sulphur yellow against  holly-and-ivy green, was a Brimstone. The year's begun! Spring is round the corner, soon there will be more butterflies, more of these joyous moments. Indeed, I had seen four or five more Brimstones before I left the island, a happy, smiling aurelian. And so home.

2 comments:

  1. I saw a painted lady in January, (here in Somerset) but I think that was just a wake-up on a warm day. However, seven frogs in my pond this morning, some of them very amorous, are a definite harbinger of Spring for me.

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  2. Wow! Yes some Painted Ladies manage to hibernate nowadays. I also hear heartening reports of orgiastic frog activity in Derbyshire...

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