March
ROOKS ARE NOW seriously repairing their nests in the treetops. The male flies in with a beakful of mud or a stick, and the female works it into the structure, to the accompaniment of much cawing by both of them, and also among their neighbours. Later in the month, when the female will be sitting on four or five blotchy green eggs, the male will bring her worms and insects to eat.
On the woodland floor, the leaf mould from last year is rapidly disappearing beneath a growth of fresh green leaves. In many places there is already a complete carpet of dog’s mercury, with its wispy, greenish-yellow flowers. The glistening tips of the bluebell leaves and the soft, many-lobed leaves of wood anemone, or windflower, are also coming through.
On grass verges the cow parsley leaves are growing thick, sometimes with a dark purple leaf among the green ones. Hogweed is also pushing up fast. Like cow parsley it belongs to the umbellifers, the family that has flowers like a circle of open umbrellas. It will grow very tall, and its coarse white flowerheads will be around until Christmas.
THE GLOSSY YELLOW stars of lesser celandine are now opening everywhere on muddy roadside verges. The petals are often streaked with purple beneath. The heart-shaped leaves grow all around them on separate stalks. Where there is rich leaf mould all along the edge of a ditch, there can be long, strung-out beds of lesser celandines, but in some of these only a few flowers are open as yet, glittering brightly among the dark, shiny foliage.
There is also a flower called greater celandine, but it is not a relative, and will not come into bloom until April. It is a larger plant with four yellow petals and is often found in old gardens, since its sharp juice was used to put on warts.
The name ‘celandine’ comes, through the Latin and the French, from the Greek word for ‘swallow’: it is the flower that supposedly comes with that bird. But in Britain the name is apt only for the greater celandine, not the lesser. There are no swallows here yet – unless someone somewhere has seen a precocious one.
IN THE WIND, bramble bushes look as if they have burst into white flower, as the leaves turn on their stalks and show their pale undersides. The thorny bramble stems are also growing vigorously: they make it difficult to walk along woodland paths without tripping up. Many gorse bushes have been in flower throughout the winter. Their bright yellow flowers are surrounded by dark green thorns and pointed leaves that look like still more thorns. The straggly gorse shrubs found on railway embankments and roundabouts are survivors from heathland that has been ploughed up or built on.
House sparrows have disappeared from many town centres but they are still quite common in villages. Sometimes a flock of male sparrows will pursue a female into a bush, chirping in a noisy chorus, displaying their dark bibs and trying to peck at her underparts. This usually happens when they see a male chasing his mate, and they join enthusiastically in pursuit. No one is quite sure why they have vanished from towns but the process began half a century ago with the disappearance of the spilt grain from horses’ nosebags. Nowadays there may be competition for food with pigeons, and fewer nesting places.
RAIN MAKES THE moss grow on garden lawns, leaving them a patchwork of different shades of green. The dead stems of teasel and rosebay willowherb resist the downpours and still stand tall in waste places: the egg-shaped teasel seedheads remain prickly and guarded by a ring of sharp spears, though they are empty of seeds by now, while the willowherb has bedraggled tufts of feathery seeds still clinging to it. More leaves of spring flowers are coming through, including the pale green leaves of primroses.
Birds are not much affected by the rain though most of them try to keep out of it. They have waterproof feathers, but after getting wet they shake themselves and preen vigorously to make sure their feathers are overlapping properly. Rain is more serious for them later in the spring, when it can wash caterpillars that they need as food for their young off the leaves. Surface-feeding duck such as mallards and shovelers keep to the shelter of the bank when it is raining, but birds such as tufted duck and pochard go on diving out in the middle of a lake.
A CURIOUS GOOSE that is found mainly on lakes in Norfolk but often turns up by other waters is the Egyptian goose. It is a fat, buff-coloured bird that looks as if it has just received a painful black eye, and it also has a disconcertingly long neck. It is an early nester, and some pairs already have a nest with eggs under a bush, or in a large hole in a bank. Not many of the broods are successful. It is really an African bird, widespread on that continent, and some were brought here from South Africa as long ago as the 18th century.
Conspicuous at the edges of lakes just now are the disintegrating heads of the bulrushes – known to botanists as great reedmace, and also sometimes called cat’s-tail. The brown sausage-shaped heads are breaking up into fluffy white seeds, and look very ragged as the wind tears at them and carries the seeds away. Where the heads are still firm, male reed buntings are sitting on them and singing. Their song is a monotonous repetition of a few dry notes, but they are handsome birds, with a black head, a white collar and a back like rich orange-brown tapestry.
BRIMSTONE BUTTERFLIES ARE on the wing on sunny mornings. They have just come out of the ivy or holly bushes where they slept all winter. The males have beautiful sulphur-coloured wings – hence the name ‘brimstone’ – and they are very conspicuous as they fly down a wide woodland path with the bare trees on either side. The females are a very pale green, almost white, and on a cursory look might be mistaken for a large cabbage white. Brimstones are long-lived butterflies. The new brood comes out of the chrysalis and flies in July, feeds up on plenty of nectar, overwinters, and – as the ones now emerging will do – lives on till the next June or July. They have a very long proboscis, and can reach with it into runner beans and teasels to extract the nectar that lies deep in those flowers.
Bluebell leaves are now coming up all over the woodland floor. The plants need to develop before the new leaves on the trees cast too much shade over them. The bluebell leaves are glossy green and sharp-pointed. On a bright morning, when the wind blows, little waves of silver seem to pass over the ground as they bend and catch the light.
MANY MOUNTAIN OR blue hares