Watching Matthew Bourne's brilliant modern adaptation of the Sleeping Beauty ballet at Sadler's Wells recently prompted me to think of the many sleeping beauties all around us.

I refer to hibernating butterflies, moths, ladybirds, assorted flies bees and wasps etc now holed up in trees, in our sheds or lofts, in dense vegetation or even out in the open.

None of them need the kiss of a handsome prince or in Matthew Bourne's version, the local gardener to administer a wake up call. Instead, an increase in daylight hours and a welcome spell of warm weather is enough to stir them into springlike action.

February can be tricky with possible snow and frost. It can also be wet, an old descriptive country name for the month being 'February fill-dyke'.

Nevertheless, longer days if sunny and mild may tempt brimstone butterflies (pictured) to wake and fly along bare hedgerows, looking like animated daffodils as they search for meagre nectar sources. Early spring flowers such as primroses and dandelions are favourites for butterflies, snowdrops tempt bees and a major player is pussy willow, the catkins of which can often be seen covered in bumblebees feeding in the sunshine.

Comma butterflies, their ragged wing margins resembling dead leaves spend the winter in leaf litter or on tree trunks while red admirals and peacocks choose hollow trees. The small tortoiseshell, once one of our most abundant species is comparatively scarce nowadays following a dramatic decline within the past ten years.

So, from now on, weather permitting, there is much to look out for in the insect world and on 14th February the first red admiral was seen feeding from snowdrops.