A mostly-foggy January made it impossible to each area at least once, so "off-season surveys" were delayed until 27 February.
With only two mating violet carpenter bees (Xylocopa violacea) near the butterfly bush in "Yard", no insects were spotted. Plant-wise, only a few patches of snowdrops and a few individuals of both winter aconite and crocuses were observed across my village but not within the zones outside of it.
Zone I luckily turned out to not have been grazed entirely. The abandoned field next to the hill's southern brink, on the other hand, lost its tiny arm to the southwest to a growing maize field. The hill itself also saw some damage to an old path by a motocross bike, with trails of dirt being visible all the way down to the bike path.
And although "Mixed Field" already has been listed a temporary zone, I did not expect it to shrink it by 50% this soon and its only spot, where butterflies could be encountered in decent numbers being absorbed by the wheat field next to it, disappearing entirely. This zone actually was divided by a narrow street, with the northern patch of alfalfa attracting more insects in general than the southern patch. Species such as the unidentified Colias sp. and rare observations such as P. edusa thus will no longer be possible within this area, whereas the populations of P. icarus and I. lathonia will decline. If both should end up disappearing from this area, which likely will be the case once the southern patch also gets integrated into its neighboring wheat field, I will formally wrap this section up and downgrade it to an area I won't try to keep track off since it'd be virtually indistinguishable from the already-sparse areas south of my village where, at the very best, P. rapae and traveling V. atalanta can be seen.
While I cannot tell what "David" is going to plant this year within Zone II, Zone III remains unchanged, with only the very small patch of meadow geranium having been harvested sometime between December and January.