Country diary: spring's dramatic upwelling of life

Claxton, Norfolk: The birds, wildflowers and insects burst into action; it's what the great environmentalist Roger Deakin called 'opening time in nature's great saloon'

At last those winter rains have ended and the sun shone here for two full days. Suddenly it is time for cock pheasants, flushed crimson with testosterone, to fight long tail-twisting battles; for wild violets to flower quietly over our meadow-lawn; for goldfinches to strip spider thread from the back wall to bind their nests; for hairy-footed summer-bees to zip among the rosemary blooms, and for buff-tailed and early bumblebee queens to truffle the green hellebore heads in a last garden before the marsh. They're all part of that dramatic upwelling of life which Roger Deakin once called "opening time in nature's great saloon".