Lives on the limestone: catkins and bugs in boles

Stoke Wood, Northamptonshire Hazel, as boles, can provide a rich hunting ground and my first unusual find is a pill millipede

The rolling limestone landscape exhibits the first signs of spring. Hawthorn buds burst with fresh green leaves and huge queen bumblebees career between blossoming sallow shrubs. Rockingham Forest once spanned these valleys and hills, and Stoke Wood is a salvaged fragment of that vast forest.

The wood has a rich ground flora; bluebell leaves push through in many areas, while elsewhere there are ankle-high seas of proud and pointed-leaved dog's mercury, the plants already waving their unassuming tassels of green flowers.