I didn’t quite make it up in to time to ‘dance the sun up’ this morning, but was nonetheless, was lovely to be out and about early for the first of May, with the Park bursting into new life all around as the spring transforms Durlston.
The woodland is looking glorious at the moment, in a palette of almost every shade of green imaginable! The huge, palmate leaves of Horse Chestnut are almost eye-wateringly bright, with white flowers poking up from among them, contrasting with the darker green needles of Black Pine (which is covered in ‘candlesticks). These are not true flowers, lacking their complex reproductive parts, they are properly ‘strobili’, meaning ‘tiny cones’ and evolved much earlier.
As Blackthorn and Wild Cherry flowers start to fade, the ‘May’ or Hawthorn is starting to break it’s buds (so almost time to start ‘casting some clouts’ – the old rhyme referring not to the month of May, but the May blossom).
Green Woodpeckers cackle maniacally as I cross Long Meadow, with their characteristic ‘cigar ash’ droppings to be found on many of the Yellow Meadow Ant hills around the meadows and downs.
A growing chorus of birdsong fills the air, with Skylarks, Blackcaps, Whitethroats, Chiffchaffs, Blue Tits and Great Tits all in good voice this morning. Twittering flocks of Linnets flutter around the downland, as squadrons of Swallows zoom in off the sea.
In the meadows, a yellow tide of Cowslips have swept across many of the fields, bobbing gently in the morning breeze, among a sea of the rusty red flowers of Salad Burnet.
A tall, fresh flower of Cuckoo Pint (or ‘Jack-in-the Pulpit’, to give it just a couple of it’s more repeatable traditional names!) in a hedgerow in the Saxon Field – a tall brown spadix enfolded within a green and purple ‘spathe’. Nearby, one of the most curious plants at Durlston, the rare Moonwort or Adderstongue Fern, looking a little like a miniature version of Cuckoo Pint, though completely unrelated. Also in bloom, Green-winged, Early Spider and Early Purple Orchids, to name just a few – the trouble with writing the diary at this time of year is what to leave out!