A lovely, still spring morning. After a week of heavy rain and a very foggy day yesterday, nice to see some blue skies and sunshine. The showers have refreshed trees, flowers and grass, and the park is almost dazzlingly green, in every shade imaginable.
The downland is starting to fill with colour and variety, after a winter dominated by drab bronze Tor Grass. Many thousands of Early Spider Orchids swarm across the short turf (look out for them on this year’s Springwatch!), with dark pink Early Purple Orchids and Green-winged Orchids also in abundance.
Dark blue Common Milkwort flowers also nestle among the short turf, with the ‘frilly’ yellow flowers of Horseshoe Vetch also starting to appear. The strange, almost geometric flowerheads of Salad Burnet bob gently in the light breeze – the males adorned with dangling pale yellow flowers, the females with a stubbly crimson fuzz. The first few blobs of Cuckoo Spit I have seen this year are scattered around the Lighthouse Field, each hiding a tiny green Froghopper nymph – there will be many more in the next week. Here and there, patches of Crosswort are covered with pale, lemon-yellow flowers, while the dark green ‘corkscrew’ leaves of Crow Garlic are being overtaken by the grasses around them.
A Holly Blue flutters around the Lighthouse Road bridge, where Whitethroats sing scratchily from the scrub, as a Kestrel hangs almost motionless above the Gully.
Flowers are starting to become more numerous along the clifftop, with some dense stands of Thrift flowers poking out from their cushion of leaves, alongside white Sea Campion.
Below the cliffs, Guillemots and Razorbills bob on the waves, rolling over to show their white bellies as they take their morning bath. Fulmars circle serenely above them, as a Peregrine Falcon slides by, just below the clifftop.
Above the meadows, Skylarks fill the air with their breathless song, with seas of Cowslips covering many fields, alongside Pale Flax, Bulbous Buttercup and Meadow Vetchling.