Dr Cath’s Nature Diary March 2022

Spring is usually in the air by March and now is the time for migrant birds to start appearing back in the UK. But this year, spring has so far been particularly wet! Despite the weather, there is still plenty of wildlife to look for an enjoy.

After February’s brief flirtations with Spring, by March it really feels like the season has changed. In the first week of the month I’ve seen primroses, violets and dog’s mercury in flower, daffodils are cheering the gardens and verges, and blackthorn blossom is already dusting the occasional hedge with white. As the month progresses, Spring will really be ‘busting out all over’!

I’m really looking forward to the first spring migrants arriving in the garden.

Every year the first arrival is the chiffchaff – not easily seen, but simple to identify by its repetitive call, from which it gets its name ‘chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff, chiff-chiff-chaff’ and so on. A forest ranger once admitted to me that though his heart rose on hearing the first chiffchaff of the year, after a couple of weeks he was ready to ring their feathery little necks!

Chiffchaffs are a fairly typical warbler, with olive green and pale yellow plumage and a dark stripe through the eye. They overwinter around the Mediterranean, so having a shorter migration, are almost always the first arrivals, often heard calling by the second week of the month. Hot on their heels will be the sand martins, wheatears and ring ouzels. Watch out for the first of these over water – the Mere at Ellesmere, Wood Lane and Venus Pool are good places to look. Titterstone Clee is probably the most reliable site for the latter two, but don’t forget that birds in passage (ie. heading for breeding grounds further north or west) may be found almost anywhere. By the last week of March I’ll be looking out for the first swallows and house martins too, and hoping that we won’t get a late snowfall or frost to greet them. Fortunately they’re quite ready to turn around and head back south if the weather proves unsuitable and food unavailable, so, like Spring itself, there’s sometimes a false start to the migrant influx.

There’s a real excitement to bird-watching at this time of year, as passage migrants can bring new species to even familiar patches. Many waders will be moving north and west, and March can bring ruff, redshanks, sandpipers and godwits to suitable feeding grounds around the county. I’ll be getting out to Wood Lane and Charles Sinker Fields to see what I can spot.

I’ve seen my first bat of the year this week, a pipistrelle hunting along the hedges of the local lanes. There are small clouds of gnats to tempt them out on warm evenings, but they’re quite happy to return to their roosts and back into torpor if the weather turns cold again.

Common frog and spawn (c) Richard Burkmar

Frogs and toads are reviving and heading for ponds and ditches to breed, and the occasional rather chilly-looking bee is visiting the garden. I’m going to plant some flowering hellebores (single-flowered, of course) and grape hyacinths to provide extra pollen. I should have done it earlier – last autumn would have been good – but it’s never too late. The earliest butterflies, those that hibernate as adults, will be out and about on sunny days too, so I’ll be waiting to record my first peacock, small tortoiseshell of brimstone soon.

It’s a month of expectations, excitements and rapidly- filling field notebooks for me, and I’m welcoming every new arrival and emergence with joy and a degree of relief – whatever disasters and despondencies the human world produces, nature keeps on giving and the natural world keeps turning. Something new to look forward to every day now!