Many trees and shrubs are now starting to show leaf buds opening. Most advanced seem to be honeysuckle vines, wild privet shrubs, cherry plum and common hawthorn. The larger trees generally have only a small proportion of their leaf buds ready to leaf. Noticeable, though, is that while established sycamore trees are still only at the bud stage, saplings under 1-1.5m are already in full leaf as my image of two saplings growing side by side illustrates. It is apparent that they also show differences in leaf colour and leaf stem colour, which is a normal natural variation that does occur in sycamore.

Not too many insects on the wing as the morning mist only lifted at about 11:00, but I did find a female Chocolate Mining Bee (Andrena scotica) at rest on a Common Comfrey leaf.

Under some loose bark on a fallen oak I came across a small (+/-3mm) beetle larva, possibly of the click beetle family Elateridae.

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