Critterish Corner: ‘Spring forwards’

Each month we bring you the profile of a different member of our therapy animal team and explain how they help in “Unleashing the Healing Power of Animals.” Most of the animals on our team are rescue animals, with a story to tell 

New beginnings. Spring is my favourite season of the year, so many amazing things happen and it means so much for our native flora and fauna. Winter has left behind bare trees, muddy gardens and fields. The cold weather has left us all feeling a little out of sorts with life and longing for the warm sunny days of the summer to come. 

In spring, the days start to get longer and brighter, the sun shows its warm face and the bareness of winter starts to fill with colour. We get leaves starting to bud on trees and bushes, the bulbs start to erupt from the ground, eventually displaying the bright colours of daffodils, tulips and crocuses. The birds start to collect grasses and sticks (and cigarette butts and sweet papers!) to build and line their nests ready for the new lives that they are about to create. And the fields begin to fill up with the calls of lambs – I love nothing more than seeing the lambs enjoying the spring weather and in more general terms … loving life. I know that spring is here when the lambs are frolicking.

As the temperatures rise and the days get longer, our native animals begin to emerge from their winter sleep:

• Bats, who begin to hibernate when the nights draw in and their food sources become scarce. Bats eat a lot of bugs (they can eat 3,000 per night to maintain their required energy levels and health) and as the temperatures drop, so does the volume of active insects for them to eat.

• Reptiles – snakes and lizards – hibernate. Being cold-blooded, they rely on the heat of the sun to regulate their body temperature and to aid digestion. When the sun is no longer warm, they enter a type of hibernation called brumation, which allows them to survive the winter months.

• Amphibians – frogs and newts – hibernate on the bottom of ponds. This is why we don’t see them in the colder months, but as spring flows so does the frog spawn and a new population of frogs begin to emerge from our ponds.

• Hedgehogs will start to stagger around gardens in the evening. Sometimes they have had such a good sleep that they mistakenly emerge during daytime hours. Their body clock soon brings them back to the right timetable and stops their disorientation.

• Bees huddle together in their hives and shiver, in order to keep warm, relying on their stored honey for food. In March / April, when the first flowers begin to emerge and the warmth returns, the bees begin to emerge In search of nectar. 

Each year spring arrives and as all know it follows winter; in a way our seasons are a metaphor for life. We have all had our summers, autumns, winters and springs. Spring for me means new beginnings, a new start. My bleakest winter came in 2007 when I literally lost everything and became homeless for a brief period of time. Then I was given the chance of spring, in the form of a flat, a job and a new relationship. Now I am enjoying an extended bright summer, something we all have an opportunity to enjoy if we can understand and accept that as winter follows autumn, so spring will follow winter.

Dale Preece-Kelly is an Animal Assisted Therapy Practitioner. He runs Critterish Allsorts, which brings therapy animals to locations including prisons. © Dale Preece-Kelly 2025