The first sunrise of a new year in Comfort's Wood

After the coldest night of the year, when temperatures across the UK fell to minus 13 degrees, these few snaps are how Comfort's Wood looked the following afternoon...

Bluebells and birdsong...

A short film taken on my phone of the blue-bells and birdsong. You may need to turn on your sound for this...

Music: The Mercury Tale by Jessica Yip

The blue-bells are spectacular this year and the smell is to be believed!

The spring greens look wonderful too...

And a large fungi that I spotted on a recent visit...

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...

Politicians lose their seats but Comfort's Wood gains one...

It's been quite a while since I last updated this blog and so let me add some of the new things I have noticed...

Well what I noticed first of all was this new....notice (board) on the gates at the Swattenden Lane entrance. There are also new gateposts to replace the rotten ones, and some road-stone has been added to the high wear areas through the kissing gate...

Then on April 21st I saw that a new bench had been placed within the woods at a point just above what we locals call 'the dip'...

No sooner had it appeared, than it disappeared! Well, that's what I thought anyway. In fact it had been moved to a different location, closer to the entrance to the woods...

Here's the plaque showing the dedication...

The woods themselves have really 'greened up' over the past few weeks and are looking quite lush right now...

I spotted a bird one morning that I didn't recognise and have been unable to identify thus far. Unfortunately, I only saw it once from quite a distance and only had the Lumix point and shoot camera, so these two pictures are not great and no help at all as far as ID goes...

I did wonder if it was just a hen pheasant but the shape and size didn't seem right and also that white stripe across and behind the eye seems wrong?

Plenty of hawthorn flowers around in parts of the woods...

I have found quite a number of invertebrates recently and so I will add a few here and put the rest on the wildlife page of this blog...

A Longhorn Beetle

A Brassica Bug

A Mayfly

The Sprawler (Moth Caterpillar)

Actually, I think I will add all of these latest finds to the wildlife page, including the ones above.

That's all for this update but as we enter a new month (June) there will be plenty to follow...