Blackthorn, bluebells and buzzards...

Another spring is making its presence felt in Comfort's Wood and Monday 27th of March 2017 turned out to be blessed with cloudless blue skies and warm temperatures. Time to dust off the camera and see what can be discovered on this one particular early spring day...

The surviving ash trees are flowering now

The blackthorn is looking great too

The first beeflies of the year are enjoying the wood anemonies

And there are plenty of them this year. It really does look stunning in the woods right now...

They are also attracting other insects to nectar...

This is a tiny hoverfly

The bluebells are about to burst into bloom

The primroses are already in full flower

For a lot of the time I spent walking around the woods today, I could hear the constant calling of buzzards from high above. This won't be of interest to you but I only had the macro lens on this day. The macro is for real close-up work and so there was no way I would be able to get even a half decent photograph of the buzzards who were a good 200 feet above me. Even so, I wanted to record the fact that they were there and so pointed the camera skywards and hoped. This was the result. Not good but at least I have a record of them being there to share...

I couldn't resist trying to snatch a picture of this robin either...

Back on the ground, I spotted this fungi along one of the rides...

There are plenty of celandine in flower too

A comma butterfly sunning itself

Cuckoo-flower

The cuckoo-flower seems sparse this year compared to others, but even so, there is enough to attract one of my favourite springtime butterflies...

An orange-tip butterfly (male)

It also attracted this large white butterfly

Little violets are flowering right now

The hazel is just starting to come into leaf and quite a few insects seem to find it attractive...

I shall be expecting to see the delightful, red leaf-roller weevils any day now. Meantime, and I think this was my favourite find of the day by a country mile; I discovered this bright blue weevil...

A Blue Weevil (Byctiscus betulae)

And that is about all. Not bad for a couple of hours wandering the woods...

Autumn is on the way in Comfort's Wood...

Today, October 3rd 2014 I chose an early visit to the woods. In fact it was just prior to 7am and the light was still struggling to improve from dawn and the sun had yet to put in an appearance...

                      

By the time i returned at around 2pm things had improved a little and so I took some more pictures...

And then I watched the clouds roll by for a while..

Back at ground level, I am starting to find some fungi now...

These are some of the logs left over from the coppicing that have now started to be reclaimed by nature...

That's about all for this update but I have also updated the wildlife page with some more images...

Pond-weed and hog-weed...

Since the work on clearing the larger of the two ponds and coppicing of surrounding trees in 2010, it has now started to look very overgrown again...

There's lots of pond-weed and vegetation again...

I remember shortly after the work was completed, there was no water in the pond at all. In fact, I had a walk round where the water should have been. Now it's starting to look that way again.

There has been some cutting of the huge hog-weed at the pond margins though...