Scalloped splashes of gold

‘The flower’s spread of pointed petals inspired painters to depict the sunrise’

THE nation waits—when will the first swallows be sighted? Records kept since Victorian times indicate March as the most likely month, although the migrants often arrive earlier. Hampshire naturalist and diarist Gilbert White noted in his (first published in 1789 and never out of print since) that ‘the House Swallow... appears in general on or about the 13th of April... now and then a straggler is seen much earlier’. In 2018 and 2019, sightings in the south of the country were reported during unusually warm spells in early February. Rural tradition held February 21 to be the date when the bird should arrive, but the swallow was not alone in greeting the new season of growth, for on that day, too, the lesser celandine was expected to, the Greek for swallow. From distant days past, bird and plant were twin harbingers of spring—and they still are.