Assholes or not, one of the few things I envy about the USA is that you have hummingbirds and we don’t. Never seen one in the wild yet, only on TV.
Just to rub salt in your wounds (or get your hopes up if you ever intend to visit California at least), they are just about literally the easiest wild bird to find where I live 
. Even on the shittiest birding day you are almost guaranteed to hear/see one. Their hyper-territorial nature combined with their main diet revolving around flowers means they tend perch very prominently at lower heights, dive-bomb spectacularly (territorial display), feed frequently and conspicuously, and call constantly.
They’d almost become old hat and boring if it weren’t for the fact that they’re hummingbirds.
ITYM Terroristic Little Tyrants. Usually by June they’ve figured out I’m the one who fills the feeder, and woe is me if it’s not full. They will get in my face and lodge a complaint.
Bluebells and primroses (plus the odd wood anemone sneaking into shot on the right) at Wakehurst yesterday. Spring!
j
We had two back-to-back snowstorms here in MN this past weekend. Just when we were starting to see the snow disappear from the lawn. 
Easter morning was bright with sunshine. When I was walking the dogs around 7am, it sounded like there were a million robins in the pine trees next to the house. It sounded so beautiful. It was like they were celebrating Easter!
My front door camera kept dinging me. Usually it’s just someone walking by, but this time it just wouldn’t quit. This is what I saw when I finally decided to see what it was upset about:
I watched the video, as they went over to eat my roses.
They always eat the roses. They love roses. My old plant ecology professor used to grumblingly refer to them as “long-eared rats” because they were always getting into his experimental plots and nibbling away his data 
.
I promised some more bluebells. Today we went on a charity bluebell walk.
Quite the show. It was on a farm owned by one of Mrs T’s swimming buddies.
j
Very nice . I’ve always loved the combo of open woodlands and flowery ground cover.
We got a very early and asynchronous bloom out here in CA with our weird and record-breaking March heatwave. It’s looking a lot more typically late May than mid-April right now. Still pretty, but our mostly non-native grasses are already going to seed and browning up.
Not today, but a couple of weeks ago I went on a hike, and was pleasantly surprised to see quite few butterflies. I think they were black swallowtail and orange sulfur. Both are early spring MN butterflies and match fairly well with what I remember.
The next day I went on a bicycle ride and saw my first turtles of the season/year.
Brian
Random things that you’re not expecting to see when you’re out on the bike.
j
Is that from an elk/wapiti?
Yesterday on my lunch break I parked by a nearby maple, which hasn’t quiiiiite leafed out yet … but there were hundreds of maple seedlings just starting to sprout, most still sporting their “wings” as a hat.
I went golfing today. The course is littered with Canada Geese that have no fear of golf balls nor golf carts. The squirrels are pretty chill too.
I saw a roadrunner on the way home. There were no coyote sightings.
I heard something skittering around in the garage yesterday. It turned out to be this broadhead skink.
I thought it was quite a big one, but when I looked it up I read that they could grow to 13 inches long! Y’all, I would freak out if I saw one as big as that.
As a Dung_Beetle you should. They prey on you.
That’s still a pretty big one. Did you show him the door?
Nope, he showed me how fast a skink could disappear!
I don’t know if this counts as “nature” but setting a red light today I saw a little mouse run from an adjacent lot into a 6 lane (counting turn lanes) road. It ran under tire after tire, in front of and behind. Climbing tires and coming back down. My heart breaking for the little fella, just knowing when the light turned green it was a gonner. The light changed and the car in front of me took off and it escaped. And ran right towards my car. I gave it time to get clear. I hope it made it.
Hiking at Rancho San Antonio Preserve today I noticed a movement on the edge of the trail…a stalk of grass vibrated slightly and then fell over. Hmmm, that’s odd, what’s going on? At the base of the stalk there was a scratching sound and movement of the soil but no animal that I could see.
Then, before I could turn on my phone to capture a video, the scratching sound started up again and a leaf from the plant next to the grass stalk began to vibrate and disappear into the ground. One tug, two tugs, a third tug and it was gone.
In all my hiking days I’ve never seen anything like that. I can only assume it was a gopher/vole-type creature grabbing some subterranean lunch.