​A quest is immersive,   in deep.   It's about discovery although you'll never find entirely what you seek, and always there's something elusive , something more.
Seeing an adder on a rock is unexpected since there is, at first, a chill breeze.   Skylark and meadow pipit sing, with the constant refrain of a cuckoo, distant and unseen.
Gills flow down from Shap Fell, intersecting the track south of Wetsleddale Reservoir.  The silken plumes of cotton grass seed-heads are abundant.  Tufted and tussocky sedges, they favour  wet, acid bogs.
I'm in quest of butterflies; marsh fritillary, small pearl bordered fritillary and small heath.

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Maytime in England, with bluebells, butterflies and the call of the cuckoo.
There are banks of intense blue amidst fresh green bracken fronds in Kentmere, whilst in Brigsteer Wood bluebells  fade and flag. 
My first cuckoo of spring, at last.   His call reaches us across the valley, soft waves of sound,  like an echo.  He  becomes distinct and all morning he calls, on and on, the voice of May.  
Bluebells, butterflies and the call of the cuckoo- these are the rites of spring, a rhythm and pattern I celebrate.  

 The adder basked  in the sun on a path ribbed with exposed roots beneath a larch.  It must have sensed our approach but played dead, at first.   We stopped, stepped back, and gazed. Sasha the spaniel kept clear. 
A long, slim and beautifully patterned adder.  The track was baked earth and tree-roots, seemingly rough ground but the adder glided smoothly between small stones and along a root, as if in slow motion.  An interlude to admire, then  it was gone. 
A passing moment in the life of an adder.  The long period of warm, dry weather must be perfect for them, warming the ground where they  apricate, basking in the bright sun. 
A hunting adder would take lizards, small mammals, and ground-nesting skylark and meadow pipit.   And they're viviparous, giving birth to live young. 
The zig-zag pattern along the length of the adder is distinct.  Males are silvery-grey whist females are lighter or reddish-brown.  The  adder is a beauty, probably female.
 The weather is auspicious, I know their habitat, but sightings almost always come out of the blue so if I return to look for it I may well be disappointed.  You never know what the highlight of the day might be.
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 Piel Castle and the old pier always draw the eye. On a  May  morning eider  are  on the water and roosting birds  highlight the curve of the shingle spit toward North East Point.  Curves of  sea-weed ripple over the shingle in fluctuating strand lines.  Some black and white males display to the scarcer females,  rising up from the water and flapping their wings.  Female eider rear their young,  often  coming together to form a creche.  So their  subdued  colouring. gives some protection from predation. 

'We are part of the web, not the pinnacle of it,’ writes Robert McFarlane in his book Is a River Alive?
Flights of swallows and  blue sky with a scatter  of bright white cumulous with never a hint of rain.  They’ll fly low, catching insects over sheep pastures from dawn to dusk.   Elaine’s tea-room is the social hub at Feizor, and it’s a joy to be here, once again, in the company of swallows. We share their summer residence for a few hours..

 Whitebeam might seem to be a mass of flowers but its illusory. Not flowers but tulip-like leaf buds show the white undersides of  leaves.  Whitebeam, the white tree.
The ground cracks with drought but it's a glorious day, the season of hope and beneath this tree and all along the escarpment hopeful saplings come into leaf,  slivers of would-be rowan and whitebeam  that may come to nothing on such stony ground, on the exposed escarpment.