Similes and the Natural World

There is a poem by Oscar Wilde where all the flowers of the botanical world are allowed to flower in one season. It is sometimes mocked as evidence of the poet's lack of knowledge. I find it delightful, like one of the fantastical Dutch flower paintings with their reference to all the stages in life's path.

Metaphors of migration are topical and given the many contributions that zoology has made to literature I have set out to follow those birds that follow the sun.