Read the virtual pasture diary

The pasture is already sprinkled with violets, celandines, cowslips and primroses, and the grass is starting to grow at last. So is the bracken - difficult to believe that these inch-high curled fronds will have matured into impenetrable head-high thickets of leathery foliage by summer. Generally speaking, I like anything that grows in the field, but I must admit to a mild hatred of bracken. I read somewhere that an area the size of Berkshire is colonised by bracken every year in the UK - seeing how it spreads here, I am not surprised. It used to be cut for animal bedding in the past, but now this has stopped, it's spreading on waste and undergrazed ground everywhere.

Last night, I saw the new moon in the arms of the old, more clearly than I can ever remember. Venus was quite close to the moon, the two making a wonderful sight in the clear dusk against the deep blue sky, shading down into the green and orange afterglow of sunset.

Under the trees in the gully, there is a real extravagance of flowers. On the north slope, primroses, still flowering from their early start before Christmas, bluebells now at their peak, lady's smock (taller and more profuse than the stunted specimens growing in the turf), and herb robert. On the darker south slope, celandines grow like mustard and cress, almost completely covering the ground with glossy marbled leaves and shining golden flowers.

Wonderful warm sunny weather - make the most of it in case it's the summer come early! I cleared out the garden pond - many palmate newts were revealed in residence under a blanket of NZ stonecrop thick enough for the bunny to walk over! It's a delight to watch them swooping about in the water, with their tiny elegant back feet and rippling tails very evident as they swim away after a trip to the surface. One is an albino, and it's very easy to see its pale cream form moving about underwater. The rest are the normal brown colour, and much more difficult to see unless the sun is at the right angle.

And the may blossom is out on the hawthorn trees, with its heavy and indescribable perfume, half attractive and half repellent - certainly attractive to bees, flies and hoverflies. One of the joys of late spring is to close your eyes under a may tree, inhale the scent and listen to the lazy buzz of insects. The plump buds are almost complete spheres, and quite suddenly open into sprays of white many-stamened flowers amidst the glossy lobed leaves.

The saying "ne'er cast a clout till may be out" is thought to refer to the tree rather than the month. In the days before central heating, it urged us to keep our winter woollies on until the may blooms, presumably in the hope that the worst of the cold weather would be over by then.

Still, I have decided that the plants in my garden must be up to the demands of my negligence - anything that is prone to pest damage or drought isn't replaced. The result is somewhat less showy, but what survives grows well and with minimum intervention.

Despite its name, red campion is one of the most noticeably variable of flowers. It ranges from a deep to a very pale pink, and the petals are different in shape on every plant; some are narrow and finely divided, others broad and rounded, with every variation in between. I don't know why some plants are inherently so much more variable than others; for example primroses are all very similar, the only difference being the length of the flower stalks, which is influenced by the shading the plants get.

(Red and white campion are supposed to hybridise readily, but there isn’t any white around here now, so perhaps it’s the influence of a former population?)

The grass is full of flowers, mostly purple, yellow and white. What a poetic collection of names: creeping cinquefoil, tormentil, lesser stitchwort, mouse-ear, field buttercup, bugle, brown knapweed, meadow vetchling, bird's-foot trefoil, white and red clover, oxeye daisy, cut-leaf cranesbill, lesser bindweed and chamomile.

The field has started to acquire its elusive summer smell, a faint version of hay compounded with flowers. (My dad, who's a chemist, tells me that the main component in the smell of hay is coumarin, which I learn after a web search is formed within a few hours of cutting grass or clover, and can last for many months in properly-stored hay. Less pleasantly, it can change in mouldy hay to compounds that cause internal bleeding.)

In the hedgerows, the elder is in full flower, and there are a variety of scrambling and climbing plants, including bush vetch, trailing rose and honeysuckle. More thuggish are the goosegrass, brambles and black bryony, which are still concentrating on growth rather than flowering.

There's a saying that "a sheep can starve a cow but a horse can starve a sheep". This refers to their different grazing habits. Cattle tend to leave the grass longer, but are pretty indiscriminate and will clear a whole field evenly. Sheep like shorter grass and make a much closer sward. (According to a friend who keeps them, the test for the ideal sheep pasture is to throw a penny down, and if you can't see it, the grass is too long.) However, sheep only have incisors in the bottom jaw - horses have top and bottom incisors and can crop grass incredibly short. They are much more discriminating, and don't like to graze where there is dung, hence the patches of longer grass.

Ideally, I should clear the dung regularly to stop this happening and to reduce the parasite burden in the field. However, it's hard work on a 30 degree slope, and from the conservation point of view, the variety of habitats is a good thing. (Longer grass is ideal for small mammals, which provide a source of food for owls, buzzards, hawks and other birds of prey, as well as foxes and, possibly, badgers.)

I just have to be careful with worming: enough to keep the horse healthy, but not too much to prevent the dung beetles and flies doing their work. I read somewhere that excessive use of wormers containing avermectin is bad for the birds because it kills off food insects in dung (incidentally it also means the droppings take a lot longer to be dispersed).

In places, the honeysuckle is more profuse that I have ever seen it, and so the scent is noticeable even during the day. At night it’s positively overwhelming - a good time of year to be a moth!

I’m having trouble with the Compositae: three sorts of yellow flowers, but Hieraciums in particular are notoriously difficult to identify, so I don’t feel too bad about it! I think the largest one is probably hawkbit, but the smaller solitary and branched inflorescences I don’t know - probably a cat's-ear. The same with the brambles - there are large scrambling and arching ones in the hedges, and smaller ones in the grass. I’ll leave it at Rubus!

Today, I frightened a roe deer drinking from the stream; she bounded off through the trees and across the road. The wood is full of deer paths, but at this time of year it's much more difficult to see the animals themselves because they are secretive, and largely crepuscular or nocturnal. They are easier to see during daylight in the winter months, when the woods are more open and the opportunities for feeding less.

They aren't the only ones taking advantage of a ready food source; pheasants (flying out of the corn with their loud alarm calls and whirring wings), wood pigeons, and various rodents. Any mice the cats kill have stomachs almost impossibly distended with chewed grain. (I know because I find them on the kitchen floor in the morning!)

In the hedgebanks, the foxglove spires are bent almost to the ground by the weight of their seed-pods, and an interesting mixture of opportunistic plants has appeared in the bare patches. These include a large groundsel, enchanter's nightshade, a pink hemp nettle, prickly sowthistle and a tall hawk's-beard.

On bare patches of flatter ground, there's chickweed, broadleaf plantain, spurrey and knotgrass, as well as the inevitable sea of dock and campion seedlings, nettles and creeping buttercup.

Autumn is on the way; dewy mornings, sunny days, and robins and blackbirds singing. The hedges are full of fruit and seeds: shiny pillar-box red hips, blackberries, elderberries drooping on reddening stalks, festoons of the coral and yellow berries of black bryony, the ruby-red eggs of woody nightshade, and translucent, sticky, honeysuckle berries. In the trees, maple and ash keys hang in heavy bunches, with polished black bullaces, bloomed blue sloes, crimson haws and holly berries.

It's feast-time for the small birds, who flit around making the most of the thistle-down and other pappus.

Last night, the tawny owls were hooting all over the valley, one male calling and then others answering in the distance. Some must be juveniles, as their hoots are rather uncertain and wobbly.

It's quite easy to imitate their calls by clasping your hands into a hollow ball and blowing across the gap between your thumbs - but I think it's rather unfair to invade their territory just for fun. (A year or two back there was a report in the papers about two men who had been doing this; their wives realised in conversation over the garden fence that each thought he had been calling a real owl for years!)

In the field, a few late flowers are still blooming, especially scabious and yarrow, but the riot of bindweed has disappeared now. When I go to check the pony, he mugs me for blackberries - he's not very good at picking them himself (unlike a Shetland we had), so he stands hopefully next to a bramble patch and waits for human assistance.

The cornfields are nearly all ploughed and harrowed now, so we have had big flocks of seagulls and rooks noisily searching for worms and insects.

In the marshy area where the figwort is growing, there are lots of ghostly caterpillars turning the leaves to lacy shreds. They are chalky white, with a pale grey stripe down each side and a sprinkling of black dots on their bodies. I hope they manage to pupate before it turns too cold.

Our hedge has just been trimmed - the chap who does it always does an excellent job, leaving a neat battered border on the road side. (Unlike a neighbouring farmer, who gets the hedges scalped to the bank, so they are a mess of shattered branches and broken flints, which will grow up next year with a thicket of nettles and brambles - not nearly such a good habitat for birds to nest in.)

Looking under the hazel trees in the gully, I found lots of opened nuts amongst the leaf litter. Some were shattered or split by grey squirrels, but a few show the typical neat bevelled opening of dormice. I didn’t find any opened by mice or voles, which have a more ragged gnawed opening. This photograph shows the difference:

It's rather large, but at smaller sizes you can't really see the difference between the two.

We never get to eat many of the nuts, since they are eaten or thrown on the ground before they are ripe: as you can see from the photograph, the unopened specimen is still pale cream; the nut is a rich brown colour when ripe.

Most of the leaves have blown off the beeches, and are forming crisp russet drifts against the hedgebanks. There are still a lot of seed-cases on the branches, and chaffinches are spending a lot of time hopping about under the trees looking for mast. However, most of what I've found seems to be empty, so I don't know how successful they are.

The only one I have definitely identified is the parrot wax-cap (a very good name for this brilliant yellow and green mushroom).

There are still lots of fungi about in the grass and under the trees - I've found several new sorts and can't identify any of them!

I was watching a pair of grey squirrels leaping about in the hedge, in their strange stop-motion way - they are either jumping, or more or less still. I suppose this is to fool predators, who could catch them while they were moving slowly. They are very good at moving about up high, and will attempt quite long leaps, over the lane or other open spaces, from tree to tree - anything to avoid descending to the ground. But once they do, they can be quite silly. I often follow one up the lane in the car for what seems like ages; perhaps in panic, they run ahead ignoring the safe exits in the hedge either side.

There's another genus too - a dry and much tougher fungus with widely-spaced gills that are frilled where they join the cap. It's a lovely pale apricot colour.

There are still a few summer flowers hanging on - mostly red campion in the hedge, and more seasonally, the ivy has more and more blossoms. We have just one small female holly tree in the field (out of tens), which has just started to bear berries this year at about six years old. But the birds found them early, and they are nearly all gone already - so, none to bring in for Christmas.

The gorse has been blooming sparsely for several weeks now. There's an old saying that kissing is only out of fashion when the gorse is out of bloom - an indication of how long its flowering season extends.

The gorse is still blooming sporadically, and the first few solitary primroses have appeared amongst the drab and frosted grass, earning the Latin derivation of their name "the first rose".

badger tracks

roe deer tracks

I've seen the roe deer often enough - their white rumps are very obvious as soon as they move, and if startled they make a very noisy exit. I've never seen a badger in the field itself, but tufts of coarse hair caught in the fence, runs under the fence, and bulbs dug out of the pasture are dead give-aways.

This morning, I walked up the lane in the shade, and when I came to the top of the hill, was rewarded by a wonderful dazzle of early morning sunshine illuminating winter twigs and golden hazel catkins. Seen from the other direction, it wouldn't have been so impressive, but the transition from shade to light was quite startling.

By the stream I found a rotten tree branch that had been excavated by something (I guess a bird, though I don't think woodpeckers spend much time on the ground). It must have been after the grubs living inside - I could see some exit holes about 0.5mm in diameter.

Other signs of food-gathering on the floor of the woods include places where birds have been scratching in the leaf litter (on a still day you can hear a lot of scuffling), and fresh hazelnut shells. These latter haven't come off the trees, so they must be from the squirrels' winter stores. (In places, the ground is almost paved with broken shells - a relic of the feast times earlier in the year, where the squirrels must have sat in the branches and tossed the debris down as they gorged.)

Now the evenings are lighter, the birdsong is getting more noticeable. I've heard blackbirds and robins for most of the winter, but today I heard a missel-thrush for the first time, as well as finches, tits and other birds whose song I don't know. Thrushes sit high in their chosen tree to sing, while robins and blackbirds usually hide in the branches near the top.

When I walk through the wood, the alarm calls of blackbirds, and the occasional clatter and squawk from a cock pheasant, presage my progress, however quietly I go.

One of the pleasures of autumn and winter is to go out on a still evening and listen to all the birds - so much so that when I hear a robin singing in the summer, it always brings a thrill of cold frosty evenings.

Some trees and shrubs are starting to show the first green in their buds too: hazel, bullace and honeysuckle for example. Honeysuckle has particularly attractive shoots, like blue-green flames in the hedge.

The hazel catkins are now well out on many trees, hazing the wood in yellow. If you look closely, you can see the tiny reddish female flowers close to the branches, not nearly as showy as the male catkins. (Catkin means a kitten: not very appropriate - lamb's tails is much more descriptive. Perhaps it originated with pussy willow and was extended to hazel later?)

The leaves of cuckoo-pint are unfurling crisply as they push through the leaf-mould. Some plants are plain green, and others have flecks of dark chocolate brown all over the leaves. (I've never understood why these handsome plants aren't used deliberately in gardens.) The woodland floor is getting greener by the day with bluebell shoots and celandine rosettes - but I mustn't get too optimistic - there is plenty of time for more winter weather yet!

The missel thrushes are in full song, as are blue tits, various finches and what my mum optimistically calls warblers (any unidentified brown small birds!). The thrush sits at the top of a tall tree and sings his rather staccato repetitive song at the top of his voice. I heard the strange conjunction of a robin singing and a wood pigeon cooing: one a typical sound of winter, the other of high summer. It's the first time I've heard the wood pigeons recently - perhaps they find somewhere with more food for the winter as the fields are mostly bare around here.

cramp balls
Jew's ears	brackets

One single tree in the wood (a field maple) seems very hospitable to lichens and mosses: there are about five lichens and one or two mosses growing on it. The bigger branches are almost entirely furred with growths.

There's an even more striking sight on the Undercliff below Chimney Rock, about half a mile away from us. A single tree is covered in pale green frondose lichens, and it looks as if it's covered in pale green blossom from a distance.

Later in the day, I watched a pair of roe deer on their progress along the valley and across the top of the field. When they got to the top, they sprang effortlessly over the fence and up their path into the field beyond. They are so light-footed compared to the ponies, who raise huge divots of wet turf as they canter about - the deer just leave tiny hoofprints to show where they have been.

A lot of hazel is in full flower now: on a sunny day if you stand in the shadow of a tree, you can see the drifts of pollen when a bird alights or the breeze blows. Some of the willow catkins are starting to show yellow as well: more pollen to make the hay-fever sufferer sneeze.

Down in the village, the gardens and hedges are a riot of colour: sugar-pink cherry and plum, yellow forsythia, deep pink currant, orange berberis, white magnolia and pink and red quince. It reminds me of those old-fashioned jigsaw puzzles, where the bright patches of colour are the easiest place to start, before tackling the masses of greenery and sky.

We've just had some rain after almost 3 weeks of dry, warm weather - the ground is looking unbelievably well for this time of year (last year at this date, we were almost knee-deep in wet mud). I can hardly keep up with all the new growth and things to see. It feels as if spring is well-established: in the wood, the blanket of celandine and speedwell seedlings is now pierced by fresh shoots of cow parsnip and cuckoo-pint, and on the banks, the primroses are in full, fragrant bloom. The fern leaves, which have stayed green all winter, are starting to bronze and decay, as the new leaves appear in the crown.

In the hedges, the hawthorn is starting to show green, and the blackthorn is in full flower - no blackthorn winter this year? Some ash trees have fat buds bursting with crimson stamens, whilst others are still restrained in their winter olive bark and black leaf-buds. Later in the year, these flowering trees will be laden with 'keys' - winged fruits, which help to make the ash such a prolific tree around here. The strap-shaped seedling leaves can be found in any patch of soft ground, and even growing in gravel and gutters.

I found just one cowslip where last year there were many - perhaps the grazing pressure is too much for them this year. But there are a lot of other flowers to admire: the banks under the brambles at the top of the field are bright with primroses and celandines, and in the wood, sorrel, moschatel, primrose and celandine are flowering. They need to make the most of the light before the brambles, ferns, nettles and bracken grow up.

Today is Mothering Sunday, and some of the parish church congregation will have collected posies of primroses to send to a church in Bermondsey. I think the idea is to share some of our good fortune in living here with people who must see a lot less of the countryside in their daily lives. (However, with the current crisis in British farming, I think a lot of parishioners would not consider themselves very lucky at all.)

In the pasture, celandines and violets are the main flowers, though I have seen a few rather stunted cowslips, and some ladies' smock too.

"Our" swallows have finally arrived, and there are at least two or three pairs swooping low around the house and barns; or landing on the telephone wires for a rest and a twitter.

I'm not quite sure what they are doing - perhaps the loser is the one who fails to anticipate the other one's next move? They are also moulting, and their sides look very odd because you can see the pale quills of their new flight feathers as a shiny patch on their (normally chestnut brown) sides.

Sometimes, they are harried by crows, who chase them around the sky. I've never understood why the crows do this, nor why the buzzards allow themselves to be intimidated by such small rivals.

At last, the five beech trees up the drive are coming into leaf. The one furthest east, and therefore away from the prevailing wind, starts first. There is a green wave travelling west that takes about two weeks till it reaches the last one.

It is interesting to watch the colour shift from the distance; the bare brown twigs take on a coppery haze as the bud scales expand, then a greenish one as the buds start to open. Eventually, the new leaves emerge like shreds of crumpled pale lime green taffeta - quite stunning on a breezy and sunny day like today.

A pair of swallows have taken up residence in the stable, so it's time to start parking the car away from its usual place near the stable door - birdlime is very corrosive and the paintwork is shabby enough already!

I shall be interested to see how much was missed. In theory, you spray a strip about 3m wide between two tapes, then move one tape and do the next strip. In practice, stumbling up and down a steep slope in head-high bracken, it's not quite so easy!

Later in the evening, the swallows have gone to roost, and their place is taken by quietly flittering bats - what species, I can't tell.

It's a wonderful time for insectivores - the air is alive with bees, butterflies, flies, hoverflies, midges and gnats. In the evening, crane flies rise from the lawn, and the odd cockchafer bumbles against the windows. These large brown beetles are very clumsy, and if they get into the house, spend a lot of time circling helplessly on their backs till rescued. They tickle like mad when you pick them up, but are very gentle - the long spike at the end of their abdomen is not as vicious as it looks.

This morning, I noticed lots of shallow holes scratched in the long grass and leaf litter at the edge of the wood. On closer inspection, I think these have been made by a badger (or perhaps more than one) digging for pignuts.

These are the tuberous roots of a small umbellifer (Conopodium majus) which are obviously irresistibly tasty. (I guessed at a badger, because there were badger hairs trapped in a nearby scrape under the wire fence. But from the common name of the plant, it would seem that not only badgers like them. We don’t have any pigs or wild boar hereabouts though!)

"Oak before ash, in for a splash. Ash before oak, in for a soak". This country rhyme is supposed to predict the likely weather from how trees come into leaf. This year, the ash is a lot later than the oak as you can see from the photograph; the oak leaves, at the bottom, are fully out, but the ash leaves are still expanding.

I shall wait and see how much rain we have - lots of showers so far, so perhaps it will be accurate!

In previous years, he has had two or three hens in his harem, but this year, there is just one. His plumage has remained rather scruffy - you can see his ragged tail and the pale patch where his wing feathers haven't regrown fully after the moult. Perhaps this accounts for his lack of success in attracting wives?

In the evening, the honeysuckle is overpoweringly scented, especially if you stand underneath it on a still night, and the trailing roses show up as a luminous white; there are also palest pink roses - probably dog rose.

On the shady side of the hedgebanks, there are crowded spires of foxgloves. These common flowers repay close attention - the outside of each flower is a warm deep pink, and the inside is beautifully marked with maroon spots and blotches circled with white. These do their job of attracting flying insects very well - you can nearly always find a few bumble bees sizzling away inside the flowers.

In the less shady parts of the wood, ivy and several species of ferns flourish, but in the darkest parts, there is just bare earth with leaf and twig litter.

Less commonly, there are drifts of enchanter's nightshade, and odd plants of wood sorrel, avens, pignut, germander speedwell and so on.

I read somewhere that there are millions of spiders per acre in rough grassland, and looking at the field today, it's possible to imagine. Because of the mist, all the cobwebs are full of tiny water droplets that make them much more visible than usual. As well as the familiar upright webs of garden spiders strung in the longer grasses and weeds, there are countless numbers of tiny horizontal ones in the short grass. Sticky strands of gossamer are caught on some bushes, and there are lots of irregular webs too - just a tangle of silk with no real structure.

I found what looks like lots of small tufts of sheep's wool. On closer inspection, these are the white mycelia of a fungus growing on rabbit and deer droppings in the grass. But for the mist, I doubt I would have noticed them.

The weather has been very hot, and we've had a plague of thunderflies. These unbelievably small insects are like a thin cotton thread about 1mm long, and get absolutely everywhere - inside the glass of pictures, stuck on cakes of soap, floating in the cat's water bowl, in the bath and wash-basin, and scattered randomly over every flat surface in the house. Another favourite place is wandering about on my forearms, tickling as they get tangled in the hairs.

The picture shows a garden spider feasting on this unexpected bounty - she was just moving along the threads of her web, hoovering them up.

Today, I took part in what has become one of the annual rituals in our life - haymaking on the smallholding of our friends, the Duffins. I was talking to John about this, and we decided that doing things appropriate to the season becomes increasingly important as we spend more and more time inside at the computer.

I can't begin to describe what I find so good about what is for many people just a chore - the high-speed rides on the empty trailer with the dogs bounding along beside; the stately return journey perched on top of the hay and brushed by tree branches; the golden evening sun slanting down the hillside and casting long shadows on the stubble; feeling superior to the residents of the bungalows across the valley sitting in their patio furniture; getting incredibly hot and prickly collecting and stacking the bales in the barn, later rewarded by a simple outdoor supper in the cool dark, with a small fire to keep the insects away. Well, you get the general idea!

Then, when I come to break open a bale in the middle of winter, there will be the scent to take me back to today, the compressed slices of summer grass decorated with purple knapweed heads.

A pair of pied wagtails scoot about on the lawn after insects, stopping suddenly to dip their tails; blackbirds either scuffle in leaf litter or look for worms, when the males aren't chasing each other about in the trees. Thrushes also look for worms, but are much more timid, and they also spend time hunting for snails in the ivy on the garden wall. Yesterday, I stood quietly watching one, and it emerged triumphantly with a big snail in its beak, then flew off to a patch of concrete to use as an anvil.

Flocks of 40 or 50 goldfinches and greenfinches swoop about the garden, moving from one patch of weeds to another in their search for seeds. They move to unseen signals, like a school of fish, in mysterious unison.

Elder trees are laden down with panicles of red-black berries on crimson stalks. The blackbirds are having a feast - I've just been watching a juvenile one gorging on them, then hopping to a branch to wipe the sticky bits off his beak.

Still, at least I can hear the other birds - blackbirds and robins are starting to sing again, and there is a lot of cawing and squawking from the rooks who have returned to pick at the stubble in the cornfields, as well as the mesmeric cooing of wood pigeons. I think they say "Yes I will have some cheese", but my friend Gilly reckons it's "It’s Thursday today"!

This morning we went for a walk on the beach, and the beach edge of the Undercliff is still full of late flowers - wild carrot, ragwort, fleabane, restharrow, chamomile, horned poppy and others. The butterflies were out en masse making the most of the warmth - cabbage whites and hairstreaks, red admirals, tortoiseshells, and one startling one with wings of Naples yellow - which I don’t know. The bee orchid I photographed back in June has gone now - I hope it had time to seed before someone else spotted and picked it.

Early in the morning, the peace was only disturbed by a dog splashing at the water's edge (usually, it is the roaring of power boats with water-skiers in tow. I'm sure they have a great time, but it spoils the day for hundreds of others who'd rather not listen.) The sea was almost flat calm, reflecting the pale blue of the sky almost as far as the horizon, where it darkened. One of those days when I thought, "I wish I’d brought the camera"!

Today was sunny after a clear and moonlit night, and the wind is whirling the leaves off the trees again. Rooks are hanging about waiting for the fields to be ploughed. The beeches up the drive are a favourite haunt, and I like listening to their inconsequential squawking and fluting to each other - something to replace the swallows' calls now they are, I hope, safely back in a warmer home.

In the more inaccessible places, they last for days or weeks, but where the pony is grazing, they tend to get pushed aside so he can get at the grass underneath, so lie scattered like rather pretty litter. All the photos below were taken today in an area less than 50m from side to side - on a rather dull wet afternoon, which shows the glistening surfaces of the caps well.

top 2 rows: Hygrocybes; bottom rows, I'm not sure!

This year must have been a good one for the pheasants. Usually, there are only a handful around, but this year we have a resident group of about a dozen hens and two cocks. Perhaps the set-aside fields give them more opportunities for feeding, even though the ground has been sprayed with herbicide. One of the cocks is unable to fly (his wing feathers are very tatty), and I am amazed he has survived these last two years. He runs furiously like the road runner, and squawks anxiously when the others take off and leave him behind.

This morning, I startled the females at the top of our field, and they rose noisily through the hedge to land on the ploughed field the other side - all except for one, who landed in a tree and looked very surprised as she tried to keep her balance.

I was enchanted by a flock of some 50 or 60 goldfinches and greenfinches (I think) that have been foraging in the setaside fields and our pasture. They shoal like tiny tropical fish in the blue sky, and land twittering in the branches of the beech trees. Illuminated by low winter sunshine, their breasts shine a brilliant yellow, far better than the glass baubles on the Christmas trees in town.

Because it's been so mild till now (only a few feeble ground frosts), the holly berries stayed on the trees past Christmas (most years, the birds strip them well before we put up the festive decorations). Now it's colder, the holly tree at the side of Gore Lane erupts a twittering shower of small birds every time I walk under it on my way to feed the pony.

Even though it's the depth of winter, and there are still a few of last year's leaves clinging to the willow and hazel trees, signs of this year's growth are already visible in the plump buds and developing catkins of the hazel, the copper-green flames of the honeysuckle in the hedge, and two days ago, the first primrose flower.

There's been a lot of media coverage about the increased flooding in the UK, and my observation just confirms what people have been saying about intensive agriculture and tarmac.

Chaffinch

Unidentified finches

Goldfinch

Under the trees, the bluebell shoots are starting to come through, and the celandine is starting to show its marbled and shiny leaves in earnest. Promise of spring to come.

I find it amazing that such a small bird can achieve such a volume of protracted sound, and the energy he expends in hovering (wings flapping incessantly to maintain his position in a stiff, cold breeze) must be difficult to supply from the meagre food around at this time of year.

The deer have been about quite a bit - two larger hinds and a small one (a yearling I'd guess). Perhaps the lack of walkers in the fields has made them feel safer? But I still saw one irresponsible man (a local who should know better) letting his dog run through the fields - even though there are no cattle or sheep there, the deer are just as susceptible to foot and mouth disease.

In the wood, a thick carpet of celandine seedlings is punctuated by larger plants in flower, and a few wood anemones. The bluebell leaves are about 15cm high now - but no sign of flower buds yet.

The pasture is still pretty muddy and things aren't growing faster than the pony can eat them. But in patches of grass outside the fence, daisies, celandine and dandelions are busy flowering before the grass catches up with them.

This morning, the blackthorn blossoms are finally starting to break. For a couple of weeks the buds have been getting larger and paler, and now they can contain themselves no longer. It's going to be a good year - some bushes are absolutely full of bloom. (Not for the hazel though - the show of catkins has been a lot less noticeable than usual, and some trees have aborted brown catkins, presumably nipped by the cold spell earlier.)

In the short turf of the pasture (the pony is keeping up with the growth at present), a few cowslips are showing, together with big drifts of violets on the steep faces of the terraces.

In the hedgerows, it won’t be long till bluebells and red campion are complementing the white of stitchwort and cow parsley - a patriotic display that won't be quite ready for St George's Day this year.

I found a broken blue eggshell in the field - probably a blackbird's egg stolen by a magpie. These predators are difficult to like, in spite of their striking black and white plumage. At this time of year, you can hear their harsh shrieks in the woods - probably looking for eggs to eat. Later they will be after the nestlings. Since there are no big pheasant shoots near here, there are no gamekeepers to keep down the numbers of magpies. Good for the pheasants, but definitely not for the songbirds.

The weather hasn't helped. On the last day of April, it was almost summery-warm, but May Day was horrid, with a northeast wind and driving cold rain. I felt rather guilty when we went to feed the pony and he was shivering - I took pity on him and fetched his winter rug for the night! But today it's warmer again, thank goodness.

• In the sward: field buttercup, cowslip, violet, red rattle, celandine, cinquefoil, bugle, bird's-foot trefoil, bluebell, daisy, wild strawberry, sorrel, lady's smock, ribwort, dandelion, and two speedwells (germander and another small pale one).
• In the hedgebanks: red campion, cow/hedge parsley, purple vetch, greater stitchwort, herb robert, shining cranesbill, garlic mustard, gorse.
• On the woodland floor: bluebells, celandine and the last primroses are still struggling on, despite the heavy canopy.

But because it's been so dry, there are still quite a few bare patches (more than I remember from last year, when the dry spell was much earlier), especially on the tops of the terraces and in deep hoof-holes, and the grass is quite short.

Since I wrote down the last list of flowers in the sward, the violets have disappeared, cowslips and bluebells are mostly gone to seed, and there is masses of pignut. Red clover, sorrel, mouse-ear and hawkbit are starting to flower too. Another interesting addition to the colour scheme is a large number of oak seedlings with wonderful red and ochre leaves. There are all over the place, well away from the parent oaks, so I guess they have been "planted" by jays or possibly squirrels.

There's not a breath of wind, so all the sounds of the country are drifting up to me. A wood pigeon cooing dreamily from the wood, a cockerel crowing down in the village, cows lowing, the pheasant with his rusty honking call, and of course, the distant noise of traffic.

Since my last inventory a week ago, oxeye daisy has just started, two or three Hieraciums are flowering (there are over 250 species in the UK!) and the downy shoots of knapweed are becoming more and more obvious. When they are mature, it's difficult to distinguish them, but the juvenile foliage is easy to see - we have both Centaurea jacea and Centaurea nemoralis here.

Since the main purpose of the pasture, at least from a commercial standpoint, is to grow grass, I thought this would be a good time to see how many species are growing in the sward. So I did a quick traverse of about 100 metres, from short pasture, though poached ground, to the shady edge of the field, to see what I could find. Without looking too hard, I found 14 in flower at the moment, and I know there are several more to come later in the summer. Those that I identified are listed below:

1. cock's foot - Dactylis glomerata
2. Yorkshire fog - Holcus lanatus
3. cat's tail - Phleum ??bertolonii
4. barren brome - Bromus sterilis
5. annual grass - Poa annua
6. meadow grass - Poa ??pratensis and trivialis (several similar species)
7. soft brome - Bromus mollis
8. rye - Lolium perenne
9. vernal grass - Anthoxanthum odoratum
10. woodland meadow grass - Poa nemoralis
11. dog's tail - Cynosurus cristatus
12. red fescue - Festuca rubra
13. meadow fescue - Festuca pratensis

The grass in the field is alive with insects too: almost every other tall stem is decked with white blobs of cuckoo spit (the bubbly hideaway for a tiny pale green insect called a froghopper). And there are hundreds (or probably millions) of tiny green grasshoppers, doing what they are supposed to.

Until yesterday, there were worried calls when we went near the nest - today, there are at least twice as many birds in the sky, wheeling exultantly and practising low-level flying over the roof and the garden.

In the shorter grass, many small green/brown meadow grasshoppers are in evidence.

There are still huge numbers of gatekeepers fluttering about from flower to flower or sunning themselves on the grass, and a few tortoiseshells, peacocks and red admirals enjoying the nectar. Thistles seem to be a favourite, both with butterflies and all sorts of bees - at least two kinds of bumble-bee (one with an orange-furred abdomen, and one with silvery one), honey bees, and some tiny (3mm) bees laden down with enormous pollen-baskets - how do they fly?

I ventured down into the northern half of the field that we let to neighbours for their pony, and the betony there is very profuse and quite beautiful. Most is a variable shade of magenta, but I found one plant with ice-cream pink flowers. I hope to save some seed from it and see if the colour comes true.

Bees are hardier - busy gathering nectar and pollen whatever the weather. And other creatures like spiders, beetles and grasshoppers are better able to take shelter in the grass away from the worst weather.

The hazel nuts are just starting to colour up, and even at this time of year, I can already see next year's male catkins starting to develop. Amazing.

A family of pied wagtails have reared four chicks in the garden, and these enchanting birds are also very much in evidence, running about on the house roof like wind-up toys, or stopping to dip their tails. Last week they spent a lot of time on the ground catching flying ants on the start of their flight.

This little chap is a common shrew, only about 3cms long, and very fast on his (or her) feet. Most sightings of shrews are of tiny forms zipping across the road from one hedge to the other, as if on a wire. But this one was circling around in a rather demented manner in a rut in the field - always anticlockwise. I don’t know if this is a hunting pattern, or the poor thing has brain damage. The only other time I've been able to observe shrews so easily was when we had a nest of pigmy shrews in our stable. The babies were so light they could run up and down the wooden walls using their tiny claws.

Other signs of autumn have been noticeable for a few days - an indefinable quality in the air in spite of the warmth and sun; hedgerow fruits, seeds and nuts, and the first whirling leaves in the wind from the beech trees up the drive.

The hedgerows are full of fruit, and in many ways this is their best time - the leaves are still green, but the hedge is decorated with blackberries, hips and haws, honeysuckle, nightshade, and festoons of yellow and orange bryony berries. I've picked lots of blackberries to freeze, and some to make pies and baked apples - delicious. Lots of insects (especially shield bugs and flies) and the birds love them too - as you can tell from the lilac and purple birdlime all over the fence posts!

This morning, I saw a new species - the hummingbird hawk moth, which is a truly remarkable example of convergent evolution! As its name suggests, it looks like a tiny brown hummingbird, though the beak is replaced by a long slender proboscis. The one I saw was hovering in front of some valerian, and sipping nectar from the base of the tubular flowers. Unlike most moths, this one flies by day - very fast and strongly.

The birds are getting ready for next spring - the robins are singing to mark their territories - a real treat to listen to on a sunny afternoon. I counted five blackbirds in the garden - perhaps some of the winter migrants have arrived already, or it may be the brood that was raised in the bush just outside the office window.

After the stormy weather this morning, green or yellowing leaves and twigs are scattered all over the grass, and some of the trees are almost bare. (In fact, the picture of the five trees in my lake page, which was only taken two weeks ago, is already out of date!)

If they were larks, I am delighted, since they do not thrive in the sort of intensive arable culture that is so common around us. Even the setaside is sprayed with weed-killer, so it doesn’t offer much of a refuge.

But I was lucky. Walking home in glorious golden sunshine, admiring the inky blue-grey clouds over the sea and north into Somerset. Leaves scampering along the road before me, and lots of birds.

Chaffinches pinking crossly at me from a holly tree, skylarks rising over the stubble field, crows and gulls battling the wind, and a pied wagtail. Not to forget the startled cock pheasant taking off over the hedge in panic, then sailing back to earth like a rather stiff kite

(It was today I took the shot I used for my 2001 Xmas card.)

Golden field maple, yellow and line hazel, ochre oak - all gone :-(    Not a year for scuffing through dried leaves, but for unblocking the house gutters and drains - ugh!

Cold settled weather, frosty at night. Wonderful orange sunsets preceded by pink haze all around the horizon at dusk, as I walk across the stubble field, scattering trilling larks in a wild shoal - not at all like the disciplined flocks of yellowhammers and other finches.

This is the time of year when the birds are very much in evidence - the buzzard perching on a fence post, gulls and rooks in the ploughed fields, and at last, some thrushes are starting to sing in the evening twilight - a strong clear song.

Winter migrant blackbirds are out in force - at least two times the summer population, pink-pinking crossly as we walk through the evening woods to feed the ponies. There's one in the garden with a white streak on his shoulder - I know he's a "foreigner" as he wasn't here in the summer!

Because of the cold weather, the berries are disappearing from the trees much earlier. Last year, the holly tree in our drive was still berried in March, but this year, it is almost stripped. Partly the birds, and partly a local chancer who came in the night and hacked most of the best branches out of the crown. He was openly selling it in Axminster market the next morning (Eddy Grundy lives). So, last year's Xmas photo of this glorious sight won't be repeated for several years until it has grown again to hide the bare patches.

 John Wood's rainfall records

Even on the wildest day (and there have been some!), it's quite calm down by the stream. Although the trees overhead are lashing in the wind, down here it's almost still save for the rushing of silty brown water, runoff from the winter barley fields at the top of the hill. Thrushes are singing at the tops of their voices - we had some before Xmas too, but they either moved on or stopped singing.

It's been very wet, but also mild (no need for a coat except to keep the rain off). The forecasters are promising an anticyclone later in the week, so it will be nice to see the sun.

Alarm calls are easier to learn since they are often accompanied by the sight of the bird - pheasants, crows, rooks, magpies, jays, chaffinches, blackbirds, wrens, bluetits are all easy to recognise.

For example, this morning I was walking along a deer path on the side of the goyle, and saw a roe deer dropping. In the same square metre or two, I also saw a fox dropping (amusingly, you can tell these by their spiral form - the reason for which I don't wish to speculate on here!), places where birds (probably blackbirds) had been scuffling in the leaf mould for insects, shells of hazel nuts opened by squirrels, and a large collection of pheasant droppings. I think it probably marks a place where they roost in the trees above, but there were some twigs on the ground where they might have perched more dangerously at toilet.

It's also that time of year when you get a few ponderous queen bumble-bees lumbering about on a warm afternoon, finding the spring flowers.