We are no longer in an Environmental Scheme (first time in 21 years) so we can manage the grazing according to how the fields look rather than dates in a diary.
Last year we had a cold spring so a lot of species were late coming into flower. This year it has been so much warmer (hot even) a lot of flowers are flowering earlier, and my feeling is that some of them seem to be going over very quickly too. It feels like it will be a shorter flowering season, but that is totally unscientific - it just seems like the Wood bitter-vetch for example has not been flowering for that long, but it is beginning to go to seed already.
Seals, Snipe, Skylark, Rockpipit, Cuckoo, Wheatear, Fragrant orchid, Northern marsh orchid, Greater Butterfly orchid, Heath spotted orchid, Bloody Cranesbill, Harebell, Heath bedstraw, Melancholy thistle, Burnet rose, Roseroot, Bog cotton, Wild thyme, Birds foot trefoil, Pale butterwort, Sundew, Bog Asphodel - to name some of what we saw or heard this morning....
