What to see in February & March

by Dave Emley 

Spring is coming! What can we expect to see in the next two months?

It's a bit quiet on the plant front, but male Hazel catkins have been in evidence for a while now. Have you noticed the small red female flowers though?

One of our early flowering plants is Lesser Celandine; you may have it in your garden. It is a member of the Buttercup family.

Another early plant is Coltsfoot. Its flowers appear before the leaves. You can see this alongside the stream by the path from Leacroft to the Grassy Patch.

Towards the end of March, we start to see the flowers of Wych Elm in Blackies Lane. They appear before the leaves. This is the foodplant of the White-letter Hairstreak butterfly.

I'm not really a poetry fan, especially when it doesn't rhyme (!) but there is one that, as a naturalist, I like and which I think about at this time of year. It is "Home thoughts from abroad" by Robert Browning, in which he thinks about Spring back home. If you are out early, then you will hear the lovely song of the Song Thrush. He seems to sing for hours and Browning mentions this:

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

Of course, Browning was a better poet than he was a birder, or he would have written "he sings his song thrice over".

Another early songster, and one with a more wistful tone, is the Mistle Thrush

They often get confused with Song Thrush, but they weigh twice as much and so are a much bigger and bulkier bird. The spots on the breast are smaller and more rounded, rather than streaked, as in Song Thrush and it is generally much paler underneath and more grey-brown above.

Of course, the Robin has been singing all through the winter, but his spring song is quite different. He seems to sing all day long.

One final songster that you may have heard and wondered what it was because he is not always easy to see, is the Great Tit. His typical song is a high-pitched "teecher teecher teecher". However, Great Tits have a wider repertoire than most species. So much so that if one hears an unfamiliar call, the chances are it's a Great Tit!

Flowers are few at this time of year but one of our earliest is not that exciting to look at. It is Dog's Mercury, a member of the spurge family. It is a woodland and hedgerow species, and you can find on the banks along Blackies Lane.

One of our earliest plants appears towards the end of February and is quite spectacular; it is the Cherry-plum Prunus cerasifera. In the wild it is white but there is a cultivated pink variety P. cerasifera 'Nigra' that is widely planted on the estate.

It is a beautiful shrub/tree but it can be confused with the much commoner Blackthorn. That species has great long spines of course and gives rise to sloes but it flowers a bit later. We have both on the estate.

To tell them apart you need to look at the sepals beneath the flower. In Cherry-plum, they are reflexed (turned down); in Blackthorn, they are not and clasp the flower.

Over winter some of our familiar butterflies and Bumblebees have been hibernating as adults; maybe in an outhouse, shed, greenhouse or amongst Ivy. Now it's getting lighter, and occasionally warmer, these may be coaxed out from their resting place. It is now that early flowering plants are important, for they will need nectar. Plants like Aubretia, Crocus, Anemone, Viburnum and Mahonia are all worth planting.

Of course, early spring sunshine will also bring out the familiar Honeybee.

One final thing to look out for in late February and March is frogspawn. We often see it in the pond off Blackies Lane, but you might get it in your pond too.