Well an old friend commented that I am turning into Bill Oddie (Thank You, Stuart!) and that my blogs are sounding more like Spring Watch. Well I for one am hoping Kate Humble might consider a visit as she lives just down the road and we have been known to share an aisle in a Monmouth Supermarket.

So if I have to live with this accusation, I need to live up to it. Our swallows returned to our barns on 16th April much to my amazement because the weather was at its worst. How they navigate from Africa to the same barn in Herefordshire each year is astonishing. ('She who must not be named' can’t always find home from Ross-on-Wye! – see one of my very early blogs).

Just before the swallows, we had our first hatching of baby ducks on the pond and just yesterday (24th April) I heard my first Cuckoo.

Another milestone happened about two weeks ago. We have a family of Buzzards that nest in an old Perry orchard and on clear days we often see three or four circling on thermals above the farm. They are also quite regular visitors to a small spinney about 50 metres from our house.

I was in the Perry orchard when a large bird swooped overhead and as I looked up silhouetted above me was a Red Kite. I did a doubletake because, since we moved to our farm, Buzzards have been our only large visitor. Where we lived previously in the Chilterns Red Kites were daily visitors. I knew at once the distinctive tail meant that we now had the most majestic of birds the Red Kite living somewhere  in the vicinity. I smiled a very contented smile. It’s not only Bill Oddie and Kate Humble that get excited about nature.