I really enjoy looking for early signs of Spring, after a cold and damp winter. Last week I was asked to lead a guided walk for guests at Carey's Manor Hotel, a wonderful old manor house set in its own grounds in Brockenhurst, and now a top class hotel and spa. We managed to lure a dozen or so of the guests away from the spa, and strode out across a soggy Balmer Lawn towards the woods of Pignal Inclosure. Earlier in the week, I had tried to pick a route straight across the open grazed lawn, and ended up jumping between islands in a watery flood, but managed to find lots of frogspawn on route. So today we stuck to the gravel track, and into the Inclosure, where we came across a small herd of fallow deer, and a sure sign of warmer weather - an active ant hill. The wood ants build massive structures of pine needles and tiny pieces of twig, which can grow to a metre high, and a couple of metres round. In the sun at the end of last week the ground was alive with a mass of crawling ants, repairing the nest after the winter. But, on the day of the walk, they were sluggish under cool and cloudy skies. Every time the sun breaks through, I watch for butterflies, and on Sunday I finally saw my first of the year, a single Red Admiral basking in the noon sunshine, on one of my favourite paths through Pitts Wood.
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