Spring Equinox: on the first day of spring the weird and wonderful pictures from around the world

Rare breed newborn Portland lambs soak up the early spring sunshine at Wimpole Hall farm in Cambridgeshire (Chris Radburn/PA)

The sun is shining, the daffodils are beginning to poke their nervous yellow heads through the ground and if you close your eyes you can almost imagine the lambs bleating.

Spring is just a bounce from bursting into a riotous glory of flowers, baby animals and mild light evenings. Today the northern hemisphere is celebrating the first day of spring, an event marked by the spring - or vernal - equinox. It’s a sign the clocks are about to go back too (in Britain they will go back on March 30, to be precise). However the beginning of Spring is celebrated in many cultures around the world. In Poland, people gather to burn an effigy and throw it in the river, telling winter to go away. In Mexico’s pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan, visitors bask in spring’s first sunlight atop the Pyramid of the Sun.

Take a look through some of the world’s many celebrations of Spring.

The Spring equinox in its most basic terms is when the length of the night and the length of the day are roughly equal. There are two equinoxes: one in March for the beginning of spring and one in September for the beginning of autumn. The word itself comes from the Latin for equal (‘aequus’) and night (‘nox’).