The hedgerows are whitewashed with blackthorn blossom, new flowers appear in hedges, woods and pastures, insects emerge to exploit the flowers and huge numbers of migrant birds make landfall in Dorset. Make sure you step outside to experience this fast-moving spectacle for yourself!

Already some of our deciduous woods are green with the leaves of ramsons or wild garlic and later this month masses of white star-like flowers will appear. At the same time look out for the purple-blue haze in our bluebell woods - a spectacle confined to British woodlands.  The variety of other woodland flowers also peaks at this time so take time to stop and observe them closely.

If you see a blue butterfly in your garden or elsewhere this month, it will be a newly emerged holly blue. A walk along a hedge or through woodland may yield a speckled wood in a sunny spot. This butterfly is rarely seen feeding on flowers, preferring to feed on aphid honeydew on tree leaves. In contrast the orange tip typically uses the cuckooflower whose pink flowers appear in wet meadows towards the end of the month.

A wide range of other insects are also becoming active. Take a walk across some grassland and you may see a bloody-nosed beetle lumbering through the undergrowth, so-named because it exudes reddish liquid from its mouth and joints if disturbed. Bumble bees are now a regular sight but you may also see the somewhat similar bee-fly, a furry fly with long legs and a proboscis which visits primroses. In addition, our first damselfly of the season, the large red damselfly starts to emerge from the margins of ponds, lakes and streams this month.

Dorset provides suitable conditions for all six of our native reptiles, three snakes and three lizards of which one, the slow worm, lacks legs. If you come across slow worms in your garden be grateful - they feed mainly on slugs and snails!

Chiffchaffs appeared in numbers from mid-March onwards but once winds are favourable, April offers an ever-changing stream of migrants. Sand martins, swallows and house martins may appear over gravel pits and other water bodies as they feed on the wing.

Listen for the melodic warble of the blackcap in woodland, the frenetic sound of the sedge warbler in vegetated ditches and wetland and the scratchy song of the common whitethroat delivered from a bramble bush.

If birdsong is still something of a mystery to you, then listen for your first cuckoo around the middle of April.

Along the coast and in Poole Harbour you may hear the grating 'kerrick' of a sandwich tern or the softer tones of a common tern.

And finally, late April is the time to look for cowslips in grassland and on roadside verges. Early purple orchids start to flower in favoured woods, verges and downs and the early spider orchid, which has pride of place on our DWT logo, flowers in short turf between Winspit and Durlston on the Jurassic Coast.