GLORIOUS blossoms followed one after the other as spring progressed, writes wildlife correspondent Hazel Wedlake.

Primroses carpeted the lawn. intermingling with Celandines in their thousands including swamping my borders. Also too many Lords and Ladies (Wild Arum) which seem to be having a good year. The Butterfly Society though, request we leave a few dandelions as early pollen for insects.

I use the Merlin app to identify bird calls and was pleased to find there was a Blackcap around, though I hadn’t seen it. The Chiff Chaff, “chiff chaffed” incessantly - no problem identifying his call. I didn’t realise Blackcap and Chiff Chaff migrate from Africa every year.

Following BTO advice on preventing disease, I am cleaning the feeder more regularly and reducing the seed that finches like with a view to stopping eventually so the birds are forced to feed around the garden more.

The greenhouse is full to bursting with young plants. April found me impatiently checking pots of seeds daily, disappointed when nothing had emerged, when I should know most need 10 days to germinate. When checking the pond for any sign of a frog, I was surprised to see a wiggly tail swish from under a lily leaf. It was too big for a tadpole, so maybe it was a newt and that’s why I haven’t got any frogspawn again this year. Something we’ve never seen in our garden despite plenty of wild habitat are hedgehogs, but I’m glad to say a neighbour stopped to move one in the road to safety one night.

Another batch of lady birds made their bid to escape this time from the bathroom window frame.

They’re not very good at heading for freedom. They spend a lot of time crawling up and down the window frame and its only when I feel I must help them out, that they sometimes fall off the piece of paper I’ve scooped them up with, and they suddenly remember they have wings. I thought my ex-Christmas conifer tree had produced red berries like a yew. It turned out to be a gathering of lady birds – it seems to be a favourite haunt of theirs.

Other insects on the move are the bees now very busy. My husband renewed the brood frames this year. Interestingly, over time the cells can get smaller over time, and as a result, new bees don’t grow to full size. During this process, he couldn’t locate one queen, and he was concerned the bees might swarm far too early in the year to survive as they were getting crowded. When he did find her, she was smaller than usual, possibly because the workers had reduced the amount they fed her so that she would be thin enough to fly. The queen is not fit to fly when she is fed and fat in laying mode. With bees you can never be sure what they are thinking or are going to do.