The Times A Year in Nature Notes. Derwent May

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СКАЧАТЬ wings flash as they dart nervously away with a silvery twitter, but they soon return. Greenfinches are also coming down to the ground at woodland edges to feed on fallen burdock seeds, which they greatly like. Where early dandelions have flowered, both finches will take the seeds from the dandelion clocks.

      The new spring flowers on roadside verges are the lesser celandines. On south-facing hedge banks that catch the midday sun, many of them are fully open: they normally have eight or nine glossy yellow petals of rather irregular shape, but flowers with as few as six or as many as twelve petals can be found. In shadowy ditches the greyish-yellow buds on their long thin stalks are still waiting to unfold.

      

20th February

      WEEPING WILLOWS ARE beginning to put out fresh green leaves, only two or three months after losing last year’s leaves, which still lie like small purple fish on the ground or in the water beneath them. On Lombardy poplars – the tall, slender poplars that line French roads, and also stand along many field edges in Britain – the flower buds are opening, and crimson catkins are coming out of them. These catkins are all male flowers, for the Lombardy poplar is normally without female flowers, and multiplies by putting out shoots. It is missing from the index of some tree identification books, since it is only a variety of the black poplar.

      Starlings are changing colour for the summer: they are becoming less spotty, and more black and glossy, while their beaks are turning a brighter yellow. The male’s song is also getting richer, with occasional musical phrases breaking out among the usual whirring, whistling and clacking. He will sometimes sit close to a hole in a tree or a hollow under the tiles, singing to keep other starlings out of this desirable spring nesting place. Starlings that came here from the Continent for the winter are starting to turn homeward.

      

21st February

      THE PLUMAGE OF mute swan cygnets is steadily turning from coffee-brown to white. Until recently they have been swimming with a dutiful air in a small flotilla behind their parents, but since before Christmas they have been able to fly and they are now becoming independent. The adult swans are taking up their own spring territories and turning hostile to the cygnets. Male swans can be seen swimming along the river with their wings arched above them in an aggressive posture. When they are doing this, they look from behind like a giant white meringue. There is usually another swan in their sights further along the river, and if it is a young one, it may clamber up onto the bank and move away from the water in order to feel safer.

      Moorhens are also defending their territories, and loud squawking notes and splashing sounds come from the reeds as the males quarrel with each other. Like their cousins the coots, they sometimes fight quite viciously. They are early nesters, and most of them will soon be building their reedy nests in waterside vegetation or right out in the middle of the water. Here and there, very early downy chicks have already been seen swimming with their parents.

      

22nd February

      SEVERAL GREAT WHITE egrets have been seen on marshes in the country recently. They have probably come over from the Dutch reedbeds. Their smaller relative, the little egret, has been breeding in Britain for several years, and is now becoming a familiar sight. It is a dainty, pure white heron and in summer has long white plumes on its breast. The great white egret is found in most parts of the world but, by contrast, is a very uncommon visitor here. It is a large, slow-flying bird, the size of our own heron. It too is pure white, but whereas the little egret has a black beak, the larger bird has a long yellow beak, and in the summer has flowing plumes on its back. When great white egrets are standing fishing, they also have a dramatic-looking kink in their long neck.

      Drake teal are swimming round the females on secluded lakes, making soft but far-carrying whistles that can be heard across the reedbeds. They are showing off their fine plumage – especially their chestnut heads and bottle-green eye patches – in the hope of winning a mate. Even those teal that will be leaving next month for northern Europe like to pair up before they go.

      

23rd February

      THE LESSER SPOTTED woodpecker (after which so many other ‘lesser spotted’ things are named in jest), is much less common than the great spotted woodpecker, and much more elusive. It haunts the top branches of trees and is not much bigger than a great tit. But if seen, it is easily distinguished, not only by its size but also by the fact that it has narrow black and white bars all down its back, not the big black and white patches that give the great spotted its other name of ‘pied woodpecker’.

      Lesser spotted woodpeckers are most easily found in late February and March. They draw attention to themselves by drumming on dead boughs like the larger bird, though the sound is not very different. But they also have a distinctive spring call, a slow, weak ‘pee-pee-pee’ – rather similar to one of the nuthatch’s spring calls, but not so vigorous.

      Bramblings have invaded the Lake District to feed on the abundant harvest of beechmast there this year. They are like chaffinches, but with an orange rather than a pink breast, and a dark head rather than a blue cap. They also reveal a noticeable white rump when they fly. They come south from Scandinavia in the winter, and go wherever they can find beechmast. I have heard that in Cumbria just now ‘every beech tree seems to have its flock of bramblings’.

      

24th February

      BADGERS ARE SPRING-CLEANING their burrows or ‘setts’. In the autumn, they took in bracken or fallen leaves to make a warm steamy chamber for the winter, but now they are pushing it out with their black and white snouts.

      They are also pushing out a lot of earth, and taking in new moss and early plants such as dog’s mercury. The badger cubs are about to be born, and they will need plenty of fresh, clean bedding. The cubs will not appear above ground until April or May, by which time they will look like small versions of their parents.

      Oak trees are still quite bare, but the pale brown buds are swelling slightly. Once they open, the cluster of buds at the end of each twig will go on producing new bursts, or ‘flushes’, of leaves throughout the summer. There are many tiny insect eggs on the oak twigs and branches, and blue tits and long-tailed tits are busy searching for them.

      On holm oaks, which are evergreens, the dark leaves are looking dry and shrunken as winter comes to an end, but there are minute buds on the twigs from which paler green leaves will spring.

      

25th February

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