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In this special edition of Countryfile Ellie Harrison charts the arrival of spring and looks back at some of the best springtime stories that we have featured on the programme.Ìý Ellie is on St Michaels Mount in Cornwall where the season comes early.Ìý Here, the daffodils are in full bloom, the days are getting longer and the islanders are busy getting everything ready for the start of the tourist season. Ellie catches up with a boatman launching a newly refurbished ferry.Ìý She joins the team to give the stately rooms a deep spring clean and talks the chaplain to find out why St Michaels Mount is such a place of pilgrimage. And, as the programme goes out on Easter Sunday, Ellie rings in the spring in a time honoured fashion.

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Our ancient orchards are disappearing fast. So, in 2011, Julia Bradbury caught up with a bunch of volunteers, in the orchards of Herefordshire, who are doing their bit to save these beautiful and important parts of our landscape.Ìý Then she took to the skies with the People’s Trust for Endangered Species to find out what makes our ancient orchards so good for wildlife.

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Find out what happened when Matt Baker came face to face with self-confessed ‘antlerholic’, Terry Moule on Exmoor last spring.Ìý Terry has made it his mission to fill his home with as many red deer antlers as possible – and spring is the best time to collectsome more.Ìý It’s an encounter Matt will never forget.

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John Craven investigates what it really means to eat seasonally in the spring – and looks at the environmental cost of eating food that is out of season.Ìý He asks the question ‘is it better to eat British food grown in heated greenhouses or to eat food flown in from abroad?’Ìý Find out how he got on when he took to the streets of London with one of a new breed of grocers who in the best seasonal produce.ÌýÌý

Adam Henson travels to the Valley of the Rocks on the north Devon coast.Ìý It is home to a herd of feral goats that roam the cliff tops and hillside. Twice a year, the goats are rounded up for a health check. So, when it is time for the spring round up, Adam’s goes out at first light, to help local volunteers try to catch them. What could possibly go wrong ?

Julia faces her fears when she gets up close to one of the country’s most enigmatic and shy creatures, the adder. ÌýPopulations are declining across the UK and it’s thought inbreeding is playing a big part in that. Last spring Julia headed out with Durham Wildlife Trust to find out what’s going on. But that meant they had to catch and photograph adders in the wild.Ìý Cue one very cautious presenter.

Ellie travels to the RSPB Reserve at Mersehead in Dumfires and Galloway to hunt for a very special and rather vocal animal, the Natterjack toad. ÌýSpring is the time when the males can be heard in full voice as they woo the females with their distinctive croak.Ìý As darkness descends, the whole reserve echoes to a chorus of thousands of amorous males. Ellie finds herself captivated by one of nature’s rarest spectacles.

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Blossom and bees go together.Ìý It’s one of nature’s most important relationships.Ìý Without the work bees doing in pollinating all that blossom each spring there’d be far less fruit in our baskets or crops in our fields. But as Matt found out back in April 2011, bees are massively in decline. He spent the day with a commercial bee-keeper to find out how big the problem is and what can be done to reverse it.

In a few week’s time on Countryfile, Tom Heap will also be following up on the current controversy linking the decline in bee numbers to the use of certain pesticides.