Young leaves

 Fresh young leaves are usually attractive and characteristic of spring.  These are the developing oak laeves on the oak cordon in GCM3. The coppery tints fade after a few days.

Hawthorns are very bright to but I feel there should be far more creatures in this burgeoning lushness. Scouring GSM3 with close focus binoculars every day, I not only look for invertebrates, but try to see if there is any feeding damage from larvae.  There are some suspicious holes in wood dock leaves, but nothing else.  Still the young leaves with their bright green leaves and red stems are very nice to look at. 

In brief 1 May 2023 -

3 May 2023.  18.8 max, 7.5 min.  Warmer and sunny.  Frequent visits to Wild Onion Glade by a speckled wood butterfly.  The first red campio is out on the eastern edge of Troy Track.  I saw one of the first spiders of the year.  There are shining streaks high on the birch truck.  It must be shedding sap.  I can see the top of one of the fronds of the broad buckler fern peeping out from behind the birch,  The tightly clustered ball of foliage at the top looks like a chaotic bundle of screwed up leaves, but it will soon unroll to a fromd of perfect symmetry.

2 May 2023. 16.6 max, 10,0 min. Still cool, but sunny with only a couple of basking flies on sun-warmed leaves.

1 May 2023. 18.6 max, 6.4 min.  A rather cool May Day with little going on in GSM3.  All the plants are growing fast and con't seem to mind the cool weather .  I have bought a Max/Min thermometer specifically for GSN3.