IT always amazes me the speed at which spring can arrive.

It was only a week or so ago when the spring was just a fleeting hope as most of our countryside was covered in a blanket of snow and chilled with some almost Arctic temperatures.

Then within the space of a couple of days, as conditions got milder and at least some of our wildlife has made the prediction that spring is here.

The first of these signs I noticed was the emergence of the frogs. During the winter, frogs find refuges that will both hide them from would be predators and offer some protection from the worst of the winter temperatures. This may be in cavities found deep in the base of old hedges, under rocks or most locally to me, under my garden shed. The frogs once active are driven by primal forces to return to the pond in which they themselves where spawned. If they were too fussy, new ponds would not be able to be taken advantage of and populated by frogs.

Unfortunately for me and probably the frog as well, the most direct route to the nearby pools from under my garden shed is through my house so it was no great surprise, as it seems to happen every year, to see a frog sitting on my garden doorstep looking for an opportunity to travel through my home, probably not the best course of action from both our points of view. I used a piece of paper and encouraged the frog to hope on and gave it a lift to pass through my house.

Frogs are one of nature’s risk takers when it comes to spring and will if opportunity presents emerge as early as possible and set off to spawn. There are records of frogs spawn appearing in pools in milder years as early as December in some areas. After my frog encounter, I visited my local pools to see if there was any evidence of spawning and at this point there wasn’t but I’m guessing by the time this goes to press the pools will be filled with jelly-like frogs eggs. That same day, I also witnessed nest building activity from some blackbirds.

The care these animals go to select what they feel is just the right blade of grass or twig and the care they then spend twisting it into a well formed and sturdy nest structure which they then bind together with mud carefully chosen to be of the right consistency, is amazing. Once the nest is complete, it will not be long before it is populated with between three and six brown speckled green-blue eggs. Blackbird eggs are affected by temperature but the female blackbird will do her best to shield them from this.

I doubt whether this will be enough to cope with the Arctic conditions we were experiencing less than a week ago but I hope Mrs blackbird has read the change in season right.

All being well, she will need to sit on her eggs for a further two weeks before they hatch. Then she will spend a further two weeks caring for them in the nest before the first of the young will be seen making their first steps out into the world.