And So It Begins...

... the butterfly year, that is (you guessed!). This morning was uncommonly mild, no-coat mild, the first such day of the year, and it certainly felt like the kind of morning on which something should be flying. A few bumblebees certainly were, and the odd ladybird, but it was a while before I finally saw it (in the Peace Woodland in Beacon Park) – my first butterfly of the year! It was, as so often, a male Brimstone, bright and fresh from his hibernation and energetically ranging a bank of ivy. My heart, in the manner of the poet Wordsworth but from a different cause, leapt up. Winter is over – at least in the sense of the season without butterflies: meteorological winter might well make itself felt again (it was a mild Candlemas, which is supposed to mean that winter weather will surely return). What's more, the no-butterfly season has been unusually short this time, les than three months: last year I didn't see a butterfly here in Lichfield until April, a good seven weeks later than today's sighting. Oh, and I spotted another Brimstone soon after, in a front garden, so it was a day of double delight.