Tree Following - March Update

 For Tree Folliwng this year I'm following one of the several wonderful old silver birch trees on North Merchiston Cemetery in Edinburgh. Crafty Green Boyfriend and I started walking round this cemetery (and the nearby Dalry Cemetery) every day for our #DailyExercise during the first UK lockdown last year. And we're still doing the same walk almost every day as lockdown continues!

We had a lot of snow in February this year and the tree looked beautiful 

We've found overwintering insects around the cemetery (including a number of ladybird species) and eggs (probably of the December moth) in the cracks on the bark of several of the trees in the two cemeteries. So I looked closely at the bark of this tree

The bark is wonderfully crinkled and cracked but so far I haven't found any overwintering insects or any obvious insect eggs in there. Which doesn't mean they're not there, insects could be overwintering in inaccessible parts of the tree. 

There are several silver birches in the cemetery, the photo below shows two interesting trees, the one on the left is young and still growing straight, the one on the right is gnarled with age.  

Here's my silver birch soon after the snow melted in mid February

The tree started to bud in February, these photos below were taken on25 February 

and this is what the catkins looked like at the beginning of March 

For Tree Following.