Tuesday 8 January 2013

Spring in January?

We're having wonderfully mild weather at the moment - it feels more like March than January (and last year March felt like May!). This pleasant weather is very nice but worrying too.... We are promised some cold weather in the next couple of weeks though....

Other signs of Spring:

I was woken yesterday at 2.54am by a blackbird singing;

Today,by the Water of Leith, a song thrush was singing a duet with a great tit (they sounded as though they'd been rehearsing together for ages, the great tit's 'teacher, teacher' was the perfect accompaniment to the song thrushes tuneful phrasing.)

long tailed tits, blue tits and great tits were chasing each other excitedly through the bushes alongside the Water of Leith.

The dippers were also singing on the river, but dippers, like robins, sing practically all year round.

The wonderful orange ladybirds are still huddled together in hibernation in the tops of the fence poles though...... 

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

8 comments:

The Weaver of Grass said...

I found gorse in bloom today and my aconites are through although their have not turned their yellow heads skywards yet.

Tommaso Gervasutti said...

The first day of the year was a luminous day and not wintry at all, I went to Arthur's Seat in the sunlight. Yes, a March sunlight. But maybe with a difference: the gusts of wind!!! on the top by the seat they almost tore me apart. I could hardly stand.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Weaver - lovely to see the flowers!

Tommaso - always windy in Edinburgh!

eileeninmd said...


Flowers, great weather and birds, what more could one want. Sounds like a perfect day to me. Enjoy! Have a happy week ahead.

RG said...

Not done with the fall rains here yet!

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277/

Do you read Orion? Article here by an English guy - Paul Kingsnorth - whom you no doubt know of.

Your thoughts?

Crafty Green Poet said...

Thanks Rabbits Guy - excellent article and I read a lot of Paul Kingsnorth's articles, goof writer and interesting thinker. I've also learned how to use a scythe (for conservation work), though I'm not yet proficient! I should read Orion more often, thanks again.

Optimistic Existentialist said...

I'm one of those weirdos that is not liking this spring-like weather. I want cold and snowy :)

Geraldine said...

It's raining buckets here in Interior BC today, a cool, dreary day...I'm sick of it!

I loved reading your observations, albeit they do seem a bit early to arrive don't they? Global warming looms large these days...