Pleasant, sunny spring weather has brought on the plants and brought out the insects. Today I removed my wire cage exclosure from western Troy Track since it looks very ugly and has failed to produce anything of interest within apart from two hazel seedlings with a third (nibbled) just outside the exclosure. Three seedlings within a few inches of each other indicates that there had been some sort of nut horde buried there. Interesting as the nearest source of hazel nuts is some distance away.
Using my close focus binoculars I watched a common pill woodlouse, Armadillidium vulgare, questing about in the sunshine to no apparent purpose. There was a rather splendid black beetle, probably a Carabid moving rapidly about among the vegetation and often flying from one place to the other. Twice it climbed about half a metre up the trunk of the sallow at high speed before taking to the wing. I saw the first of the wrinkled ants, Myrmica ruginodis, for the year dragging some kind of booty across Flat Stone. Other insects include a 14-spot ladybird, Propylea quattuordecimpunctata, and the copper hoverfly, Ferdinandea cuprea, both sunning themselves on leaves.
