Welburn, North Yorkshire: She’s the first I’ve seen of the year, sleepy at first, then animating into a living sculptureAfter the disarming warmth of early April, a few cold nights serve as a reset, and when I go out to collect the milk there is still a chill in the shade and the celandines are tightly closed. The sun is falling full on one of the sheets of corrugated metal I lay out in spring as warming refugia for cold-blooded creatures.I peek beneath to see the first sleepy slowworm of the year, a female, about half-grown. She lies motionless, and when I lift and hold her in my pocket, she is as cold as alabaster. I remember the first time I saw such a creature, collected in a crisp packet by a boy at my school. He said it was a lizard with no legs. I didn’t believe him. Continue reading...