Spring Flowers

Today was a perfect spring day, with blue skies, a warm breeze and high, fluffy clouds. Hanna and I headed for a favorite spot near Stamford called "Hills and Holes". It's a medieval quarry where most of the stone was mined for building the cathedrals at Ely and Peterborough. The whole of Stamford is also built from the same oolitic limestone, similar to that used in Bath and the Cotswolds. 

The site is a maze of hollows and bumps which at one time were wooded over. Evidence for this is easy to see in the presence of woodland plants on some places. Today's management calls for pretty heavy grazing to keep the turf short and to strip away nutrients, thus favouring a whole suite of limestone plants that thrive in the thin, dry soil. 

The big attractions today were pasque flowers that traditionally flower around Easter (the original Passion Flower). They are extremely rare in the wild here, and confined to chalk and limestone sites. Cowslips are out in profusion. They are much more common locally than they used to be because they are planted out along the motorway verges.

We look forward to going back next month to see if the early purple orchids are up. These will be followed by a parade of rare orchids including man orchid, which I have never seen. It's a great place for butterflies too. For birds it's not so hot, due to the heavy grazing and lack of cover or water, but it does attract a few birds of prey. Today we saw buzzard, red kite, sparrow hawk, kestrel and hobby.

This evening, after we arrived home, the first swifts returned from Africa. If you visit the Paxton Pits site click here  you can keep up with all the new arrivals there too.