30 April 2023. An Andrena mining bee landed on a leaf in the warm and hazy sunshine and I observed it through by close focus binoculars. It was an astonishingly beautiful thing with a bright ginger fur on the thorax and long black antennae. As an aesthetic experience I found it more wonderful than if I had been observing a distant lion on the African savannah. How much people miss.
On the floor of Medlar Wood there was a small splash of blue among the browns and greens - the self-sown bluebell which, all things being equal, might one day be the mother of a continuous blue carpet.
All the ferns are unfolding rapidly: the male ferns, the hart's tongue in Brambly Hedge and the broad buckler fern (which has six fronds this year) behind the big birch. The upper three quarters of the second birch (which I have kept to one metre tall has died during the winter but is producing quite healthy-looking shoots from its base.
I have now locate two budded spikes of bugle, but there seem to be fewer plants than any previous year. See https://squaremetre1.blogspot.com/search?q=bugle for the position ten years ago.. The flowering stems of sorrel are rising rapidly and the crowded buds are jammed into the spikes like green hard fish roes.
I made my first reading from the new thermometer in GSM3: max 18.6, min 6.4
29 April 2023. Continuing warmer. Plant growth is very rapid now.
28 April 2023. A warmer day with a soft and gentle breeze. I have updated the entry "Strange buds and leaves" of April 20th as my wonderment grows at the 'behaviour' of GSM3.
27 April 2023. 12.5 C at 3pm. In other words cool, but with some sunshine. Three dandelion flowers fully out but few insects here or anywhere else. The three upper buds on the wild service seedling are now expanding quickly. The base layer is pale green dusted with reddish brown and overlaid with silvery hairs. The three lower buds remain tightly closed, small bright green balls. Wild service trees are very distinct in the wider countryside when the leaves expand. The croziers on the broad buckler fern behind the birch are starting to unfurl.
I have been unable so fasr this year to spot any bugle, a plant that has been one of the most abundant and attractive in GSM3 in spring. Nor can I see any red campion in the Square Metre or its immediate surrounds though they did quite well last year. There are plenty however, in the bramble cube end of Brambly Hedge though no tufted vetch has appeared here (it did well in 2022) though it has reached maybe 30cm already in nearby parts of the garden.
There is a detailed account of the green bottle, Eudasyphora cyanella, one of the commonest flies in GSM3 at present, here; http://ramblingsofanaturalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/behaviour-of-eudasyphora-cyanella-green.html
