If you go down to the woods today....

If you go down to the woods today.... and you look up to the treetops you will find blossom, leaf buds bursting into brilliant green and, at this particular site, huge messy nests.

and woodpeckers,

pretty epiphytic ferns

views across the Somerset levels

bluebells along the path

wood anemones

more bluebells 

herons on their ragged nests

woodpeckers (and squirrels)

and also the diminutive wren. 

This is Swell Wood. An RSPB reserve - more about it HERE.

Today marks 400 years since the death of Shakespeare:

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act 2. Scene 1.)

Here is that same tiny woodland violet nodding in the wind four centuries on.