This the month when I start to feel human again after the long grey of winter. The life in the soil is bubbling up everywhere, pushing at my feet, opening me up in much the same way it unfurls the petals of newly opening wildflowers. The air is redolent with the early pollen of the willows and there is so much green it feels like standing in a room made of stained glass, all the shades from emerald to sage and everything in-between glinting around me in the bright dawn light.
The heron is now visible most mornings as he patrols the banks of the stream and mill pond, putting me in mind of a fastidious Victorian gentleman picking his way carefully so as not to get dirt on his shoes. The new growth on the banks, although going fast enough to seem exponential, has not yet spread enough to obscure the streamlets and pools surrounding the pond, so the attempts by the various waterfowl living in them to make more waterfowl remain on full and unselfconscious display to all who venture past. I did notice, however, when I splashed my way into the stream to take the video below, that the water level is far lower than is normal for this point in the year.
The dawn chorus has picked up in both volume and number of participants, especially in the last week. It’s a joy to be in the woods at dawn and hear the trees, hedges and shrubs come alive with song which seems made to celebrate the return of the sun and the blooming of the wildflowers in the wood. You could hear them in the video above but they only really got going when I reached the highest point of the wood:
One of my favourite parts of spring is watching the various wildflowers and other buds start to open. Sadly this wood doesn’t seem to have any snowdrops, so I wait instead for the white specks of the wood anemones, which are usually the first to appear. They were indeed the first this year but were soon followed by the violets, primroses and celandine and, much to my disquiet, some bluebells which are almost a month earlier than they were last year. The trees are also bursting into life, with buds and catkins and, just at the end of the month, the first white blossom in the wood.
The wood anemones are everywhere now. 
A closed wood anemone showing how pink the underside of their petals are. 
One of the very early bluebells that the last few days of warmth must have tricked into flowering. 
The Dog Violets are starting to appear 
Primroses on the bank of the stream 
Golden Saxifrage growing on the bank of the stream. 
A marsh marigold, more commonly know as a King Cup, in the pools of water next to the stream. 
The Celandine are just starting to open. 
The Cherry Plum provides the first blossom of spring. 
Hornbeam catkins in the morning sunlight. 
Willow just beginning to bud 
Willow in bud 
Willow buds fully open and sharing their pollen with everyone! 
Willow buds glowing yellow with pollen against a pale blue sky.
I am greatly pleased that, as well as hearing the dawn chorus, the set of bushes the wrens colonised last year have started shouting at me as I walk past them, confirming that the tiny feathered delinquents have once again taken up residence. Plus today I heard, for the first time this year, the drumming of a greater spotted woodpecker which makes me feel that spring has properly arrived.
Thanks to a bout of insomnia I have found myself starting my walks in the gloom before dawn. This habit has seen me be repeatedly startled by what I believe to be (based on the calls I hear from the woods at night) a tawny owl. It seems to take great pleasure in dropping out of the trees in various parts of the wood and swooping swiftly and silently past me just before daybreak. I imagine it sniggering to itself as I leap off the path and muffle a squeak of protest. The crows and magpies appear, as usual, just after the sun has rise, along with the wood pigeons and the pheasants, but their chatter has upped a level in the last few weeks and they are now positively dancing around the tree-line of the field on the edge of the wood; spring seems to have seeped into their feathers and sent them into a flutter.
The greenery is growing apace in the woods proper but, as with the edges of the stream, is not yet thick enough or tall enough to obscure the bones of the wood winter laid bare. That said, the hazel trees are now covered in brilliant green shoots and shooting up like teenagers on a growth spurt and I suspect the rest of the trees will not be far behind.
I was standing to the left (as you look at the picture) of the stump when I took the first video. 
The plug of a fallen tree continues to support the life of the wood. 
A tree stump, wound round with ivy, with wood anemones and violets in front of it. 
The first hazel leaves of spring 2021 
The wild garlic grove, just after dawn. No rabbits in sight, unfortunately. 
The way out of the wood where the corvids play
And the rabbits are once again enjoying the resurgence of the wild garlic in the grove on the eastern edge of the woods. I seem to be in daily danger of stepping on one of them, they are so reluctant to relinquish the juicy leaves they are munching on as I approach. Judging by the few fleeting glimpses I’ve had of an orange brush whisking away through the tress on the edge of the grove, the vixen who calls these woods her home has also noticed the rabbits preoccupation and is looking to turn it to her advantage.
And on that thought I shall leave you with a video of the wild garlic grove with more beautiful birdsong to brighten your day.
Kizzia Mildmay 
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