Over the next few days, the early candidates for the First Day of Spring line up one after the other:

Imbolc, usually celebrated on 1st February.  The Gaelic season whose name is thought to derive from the pregnancy of ewes (“in-belly”), or Old Irish Imb-fholc (“to cleanse oneself”), or from even earlier roots to mean “budding”. 

St. Brigid’s Day, originally the Imbolc festival celebrating the original Brigid, a pagan goddess.  When the Christian saint Brigid of Kildare came along in the 6th century, the two identities we fused, and the Saint was allocated Imbolc as her feast-day.

German immigrants imported a pre-Christian tradition of early February weather prognostication, to the USA, where Groundhog Day on 2 February is reckoned to be more fun than the Candlemas it has largely replaced. 

Groundhog Day/Candlemas is also the global celebration of World Wetlands Day, which I also think of as San Blas Eve.  The following day, on 3 February, is San Blas when, according to the Spanish saying, la cigüeña verás – you’ll see the stork.  “If he don’t show, plenty more snow.”  A silken (cloudless) sky on San Blas morning, means a good year for vines, while planting garlic on San Blas Day is guaranteed to yield seven times as much at harvest: Por San Blas, ajete: mete uno, saca siete.

​Ecologists recognise six seasons in the temperate zone, including one that bridges winter (hibernal) and spring (vernal).  The Prevernal is that time when carolling birds and nebular midges happily delude themselves that winter is over, and we happily collude in the deception.  After the wettest and warmest December and January since UK records began, we still await news of winter.

For me, this year I shall be celebrating World Wetlands Day in at least two globally-important Spanish wetlands:  Laguna de Medina, near Cádiz, and the Coto Doñana.  Then the next day, the first day of my spring, I’ll be looking for storks.  I should see a few, I’ll be going to the biggest colony in the world, and they’re already nesting, I’m told.

I’ll be tracking the advance of spring in a series of journeys that starts this weekend on the North African Coast and into Spain, and finishes at the beginning of June in the Arctic.  There’s a special website, called The Long Spring, where I’ll be reporting back in a regular blog.

With the lengthening days, and this #wierdwinter of record warmth, birdsong is in the air.

Strange times.  Especially today:  I happened to be reading about Paul Klee's (1879-1940) famous fantasy birdsong machine when a message popped up on Facebook alerting me to a real twittering machine.  

Klee's painting of 1922 was the inspiration for Harrison Birtwistle's Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum (‘The Perpetual Song of Mechanical Arcady’).  Klee was a professional-standard violinist and often used musical terms and ideas to explain his work.  Birtwistle has often spoken of Klee's juxtaposing of blocks of colour as a huge influence. Another thing they have in common is an interest in nature.  Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931, witnessing the continual infighting between the giant figures of modernism.  By contrast, “in an age of the colossus, Klee falls in love with a green leaf, a star, a butterfly’s wing." The artist Hugo Ball observed.  "I know of no man more in touch with his inspiration than Paul Klee.”

The real Twittering Machine below was made by Bontems of Paris, famous manufacturers of bird automata.

I shall be spending World Wetlands Day in one of the World's most famous wetlands - Doñana, in southern Spain.  It is a place I know well and love, and it will be good to get back.  I was last there in spring 2014, on two occasions. In the March Julian Rush and I went there to make a programme for BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth.  A month later I was back with The Observer's Robin McKie.

It was part of an EU-wide effort to persuade governments of the vital value of wild places and the European legislation that protects them.  The EU Birds and Habitats Directives had been under attack for some time, with developers and some governments regarrding them as a barrier to economic progress.  The campaign demonstrated how false this idea was, and just before Christmas the UK government, which had previously been particularly negative towards the Directives, announced that it was not going to push for them to be weakened.

Another pillar of international protection is the Ramsar Convention, a global agreement focusing on wetlands.  Every year on 2 February, the anniversary of its adoption in 1971, the Convention secretariat organises World Wetlands Day.

Unfortunately, wetlands are often viewed as wasteland, and more than 64% of the world’s wetlands have disappeared since 1900.  Much of the remaining resource is suffering neglect and mismanagement.  Yet livelihoods from fishing, rice farming, tourism and water provision all depend on wetlands.  They host a huge variety of life, protect our coastlines, provide natural sponges against river flooding, and store carbon dioxide to regulate climate change.

Wetlands for our Future: Sustainable Livelihoods is the theme for World Wetlands Day in 2016. The aim is to demonstrate the vital role of wetlands for the future of humanity and specifically their relevance towards achieving the new Sustainable Development Goals.

An international poetry competition opens tomorrow, 10 January and closes on 24 January.  Entries will be judged by English-born Tasmanian poet Sarah Day whose most recent collection Tempo has been shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards.  There is a prize of AUS$700 and AUS$100 for shortlisted entries.

​Click the button for rules and other details. Note the deadline is midnight on 24th Melbourne time - 11 hours ahead of GMT.

The reason for my visit to Doñana next month is to kick off a new project.  Between February and June 2016 I will be tracking the arrival of spring in Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic.  Starting on the North African coast, and visiting some of the most interesting wild places in Spain, France, the UK, Sweden, Finland and Norway, I will report back on what I find on www.thelongspring.com.
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I’ll be describing wildlife, places, traditions, culture and issues as I look for signs of the coming of spring. I will be finding out how spring is marked by people in the areas I visit, investigating people’s connection to their natural environment and seeing how this is changing.

I'll also use the blog to report on news from elsewhere, such as webcams from special places as the new season gets underway.  

The Long Spring is also the working title of my forthcoming book, provisionally scheduled for publication in early 2018, by Bloomsbury.