Spring bursts forth

Les & I spent the day at two venues, Maulden woods and Arlesey moat nature reserve. The weather for March 11th was tremendous, the sun broke through quite early and stayed out until night fell. we had planned to go to Flitwick moor to look for the Lesser spotted woodpeckers that have been noted there but the local gun club was going full bore and that changed our minds for us so we decamped to Maulden and were rewarded with our first singing chiffchaff of the year, buzzards calling over head, muntjacs chasing each other, Brimstones were seemingly abundant with umpteen views of singles and one pair flitting about each other, a pair of Commas briefly chased each other before going about their business and a nuthatch was singing in the more open woodland. The goldcrest above was courting and the picture was taken just after he stopped showing his really bright orange crest unfortunately. We also watched from a distance two long tailed tits building a nest right next to the path (picture five) and I took a quick shot of it as we passed, and then stood back again to watch for a few more moments.
Next we went to Arlesey and spring was also in evidence here. There were hordes of frogs and toads some croaking quite loudly and others calling quite quietly, as shown above we witnessed a couple of 'orgies' in progress with the frogs wrapping themselves into masses of writhing bodies, we felt quite concerned about the poor females underneath all these males but at least one pair managed to secrete themselves away without any added attention as can be seen in picture three. We also saw at least two species of bumble bee like the one sunning itself on the daffodil and our first primrose in flower.  There was lots of song from other bird species and the goldfinches were trying hard to outdo each other vocally, a really enjoyable day.