THE 'Merry ' month of May certainly lived up to its reputation with those 'Darling Buds' opening to reveal fresh green foliage and a range of blossom trees including lilac, wisteria, elderflower and horse chestnut candles while frothy cascades of hawthorn reached down to an under storey of cow parsley and meadow buttercups flowering in profusion together with lawn daisies and green alkanet.

In addition to newly arrived swallows swifts and martins flying over the Thames, Wetland Centre and Bushy and Richmond parks comes the common tern (pictured). About the size of a black-headed gull but slimmer and more elegant with a pronounced forked tail, they fly with a graceful bouncing buoyancy, head directed downwards and when a small fish is sighted sunning itself just below the surface, the tern flips over and plunges to the water, hopefully scooping it up.

The common tern spends our winter in West Africa, returning to Britain until late summer.

As predicted, sadly few butterflies were on the wing in the rather sunless changeable weather during the first part of May and where were the swifts? Their numbers are down by sixty percent from 1995 and none nest in my area any more following the sealing up of eaves in a large building near me, a site where at one time many pairs nested every year and I've seen few swifts elsewhere either. Most disappointing.