Painful Beginning to April

5^th April. I can’t help feeling that evolution dealt humankind an evil blow when it took us down the pathway of ‘teeth.’ Do we really need them I wonder? OK, I accept that they make us look ‘prettier’ when smiling and that they do help anyone wishing to gnaw through a T-Bone steak. However, I’m sure toothless gums with a little toughening could do the job just as well. Anyway, for the second time in recent visits I have visited the dentist feeling quite happy with the world, just to leave and then suffer days of tormented agony. I had a tooth filled and think the dentist used a shovel to scrape the tooth out before the filling went in. The pain killers have been rattling inside me for the past few days, but I managed to venture out on patch today. Anyway I never want to upset any man or woman who has the power to hold a drill in your mouth so I’d just like to say I hold nothing personally against my dentist.

I was down by the lake by 3.30pm hoping for a Swallow. There was no sign at all of any hirundines. I saw two Swallows over the lake on 6^th April last year, so will pop down to take a look tomorrow. Pleased to say that the pairs of Great Crested Grebe progress nicely.

There is little chance of anything remaining hidden in what is now almost a ‘bald’ floating reed-bed. Hopefully something will be done with this later in the year. It was warm today, but cloudy and windy and that wasn’t going to entice butterflies. I didn’t see any. I decided to take a walk and listen for any early Willow Warbler. I wasn’t optimistic that any would be on patch yet and I was proven correct. Numbers of Chiffchaff have built up. Wren song seemed to predominate. The birdsong was rather rudely interrupted by a collective going off of house alarms in the area. I passed at least three homes where the alarms were blasting away and of course, with no one taking a blind bit of notice. Like teeth, I’m sure that these alarms serve little positive purpose. I found the odd Lesser Black Backed Gull before going home to find the paracetamol.