I WENT down to my little wood the other day to check up on the progress of spring. It was sunny and the birds were singing but the ground felt cold and some things were behind schedule.

Dense sprays of blackthorn blossom are lighting up hedgerows around the country at present.

OVER the past few days my small front lawn has become a disputed territory, something like a miniature Crimea. The rival claimants are two male blackbirds.

The theory that pine martens prey selectively on grey squirrels and that this can lead to native red squirrels recolonising areas that they had been banished from by the greys is fairly well known.

THE soil in my garden was saturated for most of the winter but it is just beginning to dry out enough to allow me to prepare the beds to receive the vegetable seedlings sprouting in the greenhouse.

FOR most of our wildlife, though not quite all of it, spring is the season for mating and breeding.

WHEN the Swedish genius Carl Linnaeus published the first skimpy edition of Systema Naturae in 1735 he revolutionised the way we look at and describe the natural world.

ON one of the few calm days we’ve had recently, I was out contemplating my sodden vegetable garden and when I’d be able to prepare the beds for planting. I heard an unmistakable sound. The call of wild geese, which is like a distant pack of hounds in the sky.

THIS is the time of year when pike spawn. They usually travel considerable distances to do so, moving into very shallow water. The males and females travel separately, as the females are much larger and have cannibalistic tendencies.

THE series of winter storms lashing the country, plus the fact I’ve had a cold, meant much of my recent experience of the outdoors has been confined to looking out at it through the window.