One of the pleasures of living in a county like Durham, whose topography stretches from sea-level on the coast to the high Pennine hills that form the backbone of England is that you can extend the pleasures of spring. Today these primroses were in full flower on the edge of the sea cliffs just south of Seaham but it will be anything up to a month before the same species reaches this stage of development in the more exposed parts of Upper Weardale - offering opportunities for enjoying them over an extended period.
These violets were in bloom a little further along the cliff edge. I think this is hairy violet Viola hirta because I couldn't retect any scent, although you can never discount the possibility of the presence of sweet violet V. odorata genes, as these two early-flowering species hybridise.
Sunday's sunshine brought out the gorse flowers on the cliffs, with their distinctive aroma of coconut.
There were hundreds of coltsfoot blooms in the grass on the cliffs. The leaves won't appear for a couple of weeks, only expanding after the blooms begin to fade. The plant spreads via a creeping underground rhizome, so when you see a fine display of coltsfoot flowers covering a large area, to appreciate the full extent of the plant you need to imagine the network of underground rhizomes that connect them all together.
The flower buds of blackthorn (sloe) on the cliffs were on the point of bursting but I had to look hard to find one that had opened...
This is a stonechat, perched on the thorn scrub and in fine voice, and ......
.... here's another, in handsome breeding plumage.
When I turned over one of the limestone boulders down on the beach at Hawthorn Hive I found a family of pill bugs Armidillidium vulgare.
When they find themselves threatened these little armoured crustaceans have a neat trick......
They curl themslves up....
....into an almost perfect armoured sphere and simply roll away into the grass....
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