GUEST post by Shirley Curran

A hike in the Jura mountains

Wild daffodils, melting snow, Jura April 2010 (photo, Shirley Curran)

It is very quiet up on the Colomby de Gex during the week but, today, we saw 13 chamois. It is difficult to know what they are eating on the barren cliff side but they are very busy.

The green woodpeckers, jays and cuckoos were noisy and we saw a rare sight, an eighteen-inch long Jura viper. Sadly he was dead; he had probably been dropped by a predatory bird.

However, the most spectacular sight was, as it is every year, the vast fields of wild daffodils.

There are thousands of them up there and today they were in full flower and at their most beautiful, just below the last vestiges of snow.

The weather was glorious, perfect for just about any gardening chores, but sometimes you have to stop gardening and take a day or two off, hang out, travel the way non-gardeners do.

Here are some of the things creatures of various sorts in Geneva, Vaud and Valais were doing on the first real warm-weather weekend (click on images to view larger):

Lambs did that lamb thing – leaping and baaaing and running to mother to hide from visitors until curiosity got the better of the little ones. The meadows are suddenly growing rapidly, so there is plenty to be cheerful about if you’re a lamb.

Some people, taking evening walks in Vaud, photographed tulips in the dark. In Geneva, birds were mating (spot the pigeons as well as the ducks?). People were doing similar things, but you have to spot them in the news story about weekend weather, published 25 April.

Above Sierre, Valais, other people just sat and watched the single cloud in the sky  while sun worshippers stayed grounded. The glacially turquoise water of

Lake G