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Sarah Ryan enjoys a multitude of spring flowers and a winged orchestra just a few steps from her house

ABRIEF GUST OF wind, more an exuberant breeze, ruffles the leaves of the trees and sends a cascade of apple blossom to the ground. The grass is scattered with windblown petals, creamy white, with a touch of pink, some curling and bronzing at the edges. The flowers of the blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, have long gone and, with the drifting of the apple blossom, only the wild cherry, Prunus avium, with its flowers as clean and crinkled as washed cotton, holds fast.

Many hundreds of flowers have erupted to take the blossom’s place, and the hedgerow is white with the flowers of hawthorn, cow parsley, greater stitchwort and the gauzy globes of dandelions gone to seed. There are elder flowers, too: most are still balled up in tiny, round buds, but those which have burst send out a creamy vanilla scent with an intoxicating floral note. Others are less obvious: the ash tree, Fraxinus excelsior, is in flower, but its dark mauve blooms are so plain that they are easy to miss, even when one is looking for them. One of the latest in the season, it is only just beginning to leaf, thrusting sooty green leaflets out of its coal-black buds.

Sign of new life

I pass the ash tree just after leaving the house and, near the grass humped up over its thick roots, I spy an eggshell, broken in two. The shell is blue, with a spray of pale brown freckles, and approximately the size of my thumb from the first knuckle up: it is a blackbird’s egg. Inside, the shell is lined with a fine, creamy membrane; soft and smooth. It is a happy find: the presence of the membrane and the neat capping of the egg indicate that this is a hatched, not predated, egg. Robbed shells are more roughly broken, with jagged puncture marks and cracked edges folding inward with the force of the blow. Calories are hard to find in the wild, so everything inside the egg, including the membrane, is eaten.

Blackbirds often carry eggshells far from the nest to avoid alerting predators to its presence, and this one lies some distance from the nearest hedge. It is so thickly tangled that all I can make out are shadowy twigs and indistinct flutters. Pairs have been darting in and out of this hedge for weeks, gathering nest materials, foraging for worms and flitting to the thicket with beaks full.

Dropping the egg pieces lightly back by the tree roots, I wander out along the lane. Past the houses, the

“And o’er her half-formed nest, with happy wings Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings, Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies, And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies”

John Clare, ‘The Skylark’

narrow road is bordered with hawthorn and gorse in flower; the blooms emanate a sweet coconut scent. Among the grasses which have grown long are red dead nettles, red campion and green alkanet, with its paradoxical tiny blue flowers. In a patch of greater stitchwort, occasional late bluebells indicate the presence, at one time, of an old wood.

Spring serenade

The sound of birdsong follows me along the lane. First, the blackbird’s baritone melody from atop a hawthorn sprig; then, the robin’s more highly pitched song. As I leave the village, the skylark’s warble, as unbroken as running water, comes in, and I stand for a while at the edge of a field, trying to trace the hovering speck. This tiny bird’s song flight can take it as high as 330ft (101m) in the air, and even though the sky is an untainted blue, and the song is rich and clear, I struggle to spot it; it is always higher than I think. Craning my neck, I see it finally: a tiny brown mark against the sky. At this point in its flight, it is fluttering at 12 wingbeats per second. It swoops downward towards the crops, falls silent, and drops to the ground. A honeybee droning past calls my attention back, and high in a tree, a Song thrush starts up. It is never quiet in May for long.

“So the fair flower expands its lucid form To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm”

Erasmus Darwin, Ô The Botanic Garden: The Economy of Vegetation’

Left to right: Pristine Prunus avium ‘Stella’ flowers; wafts of cow parsley umbels overhung with hawthorn; flowers of the elder release their heady fragrance; purple buds open on an ash tree.

Walking home along the lane to the accompaniment of the melodies of birds in the trees only adds to the joy of a spring stroll in the countryside.

Sarah Ryan grew up in the Scottish Borders, climbing trees and poring over wildlife books. Those habits have little changed and she still makes time daily to get out into the woods nearby, or at weekends to venture further afield. Inspiration comes from Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd, Kathleen Raine, Chris Watson and outside the window.

Left to right: Smooth, glossy blackbird eggs; silken webs woven by Ermine moth caterpillars on hawthorn; pretty blue flowers of green alkanet, Pentaglottis sempervirens; a soaring skylark’s song.