First Signs of Spring

It's unlikely that a spring has gone by since I first started the Kilchoan Diary in 2009 when I haven't reported the sighting of the first butterfly. There's something very special about these insects, perhaps their brilliant colours and patterns, perhaps their rather ungainly flight. Butterfly Conservation recently reported that 2020 was a good year for butterflies - link here - but warned that their long term prospects remained poor, with almost a third of species showing serious decline over the last fifty years.

This tortoiseshell was sunning itself on a flagstone at the front of the house but was, in fact, the second I'd seen. I disentangled the first from the cobwebs on the inside of the window in our shed where it had overwintered.

Other creatures are also beginning to appear. We saw the first honey bees some weeks ago but the first bumblebees - another group which is in serious decline - have been on the wing here for about a week. Being so far north we are, of course, behind most of the rest of the UK but everything here catches up fast as the days lengthen. By the solstice we'll be enjoying almost 24-hour daylight.

Not everything that's appearing is altogether welcome. This is the first slug of the year, fortunately not in our garden or, worse, in the greenhouse where, I'm proud to say, the first mesembryanthemums are beginning to sprout from seeds I planted a week or so ago.

All this joy at the early signs of spring seems a little premature when one looks at the forecast. The BBC is promising us winds gusting over gale force on Sunday and Monday accompanied by winter showers and a wind which, having swung into the north, will drag down Arctic air....

....which will send temperatures plummeting well below zero with little respite until well into the week after next. This clip is from the Windy.com website here.