I ALWAYS feel that the months of May and June are important times in the calendar of a Ranger looking after wetland areas.

It is at this time of year that the results of the previous year's management can be most clearly seen as the spring and early summer flowers come into bloom.

At this time, you get a chance to compare the extent and variety of these against what occurred in previous years. It is important to do this three or four times during this period to get a proper indication of the condition of the wetland areas.

Personally, I feel May and early June are the best months for this. May is early enough to catch most of the spring blooms, while by the end of June the height of the more aggressive marsh vegetation is such that you can barely see your hand in front of your face, let alone the flowers.

Hence, for the past month, I have been putting on my wellies, plastering myself in insect repellent and setting off into the district's marshes. Even in May, they are still rather damp underfoot (in some places even impassable for wellingtons) and the first of the marshes biting insects will have already started to take to the wing. Despite this, I always seem to get that childhood Christmas morning feeling as I travel out to the first of the wetlands, particularly as I'm never quite sure what I'm going to find.

This year I visited Redstone first and I must say that as I got out of my car I felt slightly disappointed.

During the previous year there had been a really welcoming blast of colour, but this year there were shades of lush green with just the odd speck of pink and yellow showing.

Quite concerned, I hopped over the stile into a three to four foot high tangle of nettle, gypsy wort and tall grasses such as timothy, reed canary grass and tufted hair grass.

I pushed my way on, accompanied by the familiar whine of mosquitoes who were constantly looking for a chink in my insect repellent armour.

It quickly became apparent what had happened to the colourful wild flowers of last year.

It was not so much that they were not there, but that they had disappeared.

Well, at least they were well hidden from the car park by the rapid growth of some of the other marsh plants following the rather good growing conditions we had had this month.

By now I was in amongst the tangled vegetation of the marsh and I could not help but be astounded by the beauty and abundance of wild flowers that were in bloom.

There were some beautiful displays of ragged robin, whose lovely feather-like pink flowers were framed amidst a mass of tiny white marsh bedstraw flowers making the most wonderful contrast.

There was also the promise of beauty still to come, as the buds of the yellow flag irises were bulging, ready to burst open. I guess these large, majestic flowers will spread their own very special character across the wetlands by the time you read this article.