Wildlife through the year: March

The lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) covers a bank in the garden and finds its way into cracks in walls and steps

The little green book that accompanied my childhood was “Wild Life Through the Year” by Richard Morse. It was published in 1942 and I particularly like the sketchbook page for every month. So every month I am showing these pages on my blog and making my own observations, based largely on my 2010 city garden. I don’t get out much! Read earlier months here.

Daffodils for St David's Day on March 1 - although these are a cultivated variety, Golden Ducat, not the wild daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus)

So far this year has been great – I have always observed nature but I am finally starting to identify some plants and birds I know but can’t name, or have heard of but can’t recognise.

Traditionally we have March winds and they say if March comes in like a lion it will go out like a lamb. But as with February this year, it has not been a typical month. Not much wind, but a lot of the rain we would usually have expected in February.

Then on the last two days of March we had gales in some parts of Britain and heavy snow in Scotland. So it was in like a lamb, out like a lion, then.

As befits the month of St David’s Day (March 1), our national feast day in Wales, it is a golden month, as golden as the saint’s daffodils. In our garden there are also primroses and lesser celandines and next door’s forsythia tree is in flower. There are also bumble bees around.

The primrose (Primula vulgaris) is a bit late this year, but in full flower in March

The blackbird so unusually quiet in February, finally found its voice again on the first day of March and by the end of the month was prominent in the dawn chorus, the song thrush now taking something of a back seat.

While the thrush repeats words and phrases over and over, the blackbird seems to sing in whole sentences, having a conversational tone. Lying in bed half asleep and listening, you can imagine the male blackbird telling its life story, listing its conquests over the years and how many offspring it has had, and what happened to them, and its close shaves with cats, etc…

As well as the thrush and blackbird, in the dawn chorus I can now recognise the robin and as the sun rises the great tit, coal tit and blue tit.

Here is what you would expect to see in March in the 1940s…

From a March wildlife sketchbook in the 1940s

1. Chiffchaff 2. Flowers of blackthorn 3. March moth, male and female 4. Peacock butterfly 5. Grey cushioned grimmia in fruit 6. Hare 7. Sweet violet 8. Flowers of sallow 9. Marsh marigold 10. Wheatear 11. String of toad spawn 12. Scarlet elf-cup fungus

chiffchaff_rspb

1. Chiffchaff
Well, this has been a bit of a revelation. One early morning towards the end of March when I sat down to write this diary I saw a small light-brown bird flitting around the ash trees in the garden and tried desperately to take a picture but failed.

It was very small, very darting and apparently a bit shy. It wasn’t the wren, or dunnock, or robin, or nuthatch, or female blackcap, or female chaffinch, or anything like a gold-crest or grey wagtail.

This year in particular I have been trying to identify bird calls in the garden and for ages I have been hearing a “chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff” and wondering what it was. It is a very common sound in the garden at the moment but I had been ignoring the blindingly obvious, that it WAS a chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), just because I thought I had never seen one – not that I had ever bothered to find out what one looked like.

I checked on the chiffchaff’s call on the RSPB website and found that I had been making a wrong assumption. I thought they were one of those birds you find only in the home counties of the South East of England, but I now see we are in the area where chiffchaffs are resident all year round.

They like woodland and parkland, which we border, so putting together the sound and possible sighting, it looks like I can tick this one off my list.

Especially as I finally DID manage to catch a picture of it on March 27! Hooray!

A capture of the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) in my garden in March 2010

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2. Flowers of blackthorn
I can recognise a member of the prunus family in blossom when I see one, but not necessarily which member – although the long, dark thorns should be a bit of a giveaway. Also called sloe, blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is good for making a country wine and gin.

Blackthorn blossom overgrown with lichen, along the old canal at Pembrey, South Wales, in April 2006

One thing I am confused about is the colour of the stamens – I have seen various images online and none seem to be as pink as those in this picture of mine – although the painting in my old copy of The Concise British Flora in Colour W Keble Martin DO seem to be pink. Maybe it’s a variable.
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3. March moth, male and female
Well, the March moth (Alsophila aescularia) is one of those things I have never noticed, or at least never identified, but here is a link to an interesting blog post from someone living in Oxfordshire, who identified one at this time last year…

On the subject of identification, I snapped this moth on a wall on the way to the bus stop recently (and it was still in exactly the same place a day later). I thought it would be a peppered moth but it’s not and after looking at hundreds of pictures online and the Observer’s Book of the Larger British Moths, I still couldn’t name it…

However, I later found a similar moth on Brian Stone’s blog and I conclude it could be a Biston strataria (oak beauty moth). That takes me back to my original peppered moth thoughts, as that is Biston betularia…

Moth seen on a wall in March, possibly Biston strataria (oak beauty moth)

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A peacock butterfly (Inachis io) at Dewstow Gardens, South Wales, in August 2008

4. Peacock butterfly
Well, I haven’t seen one yet this year, but I do see these quite often in a normal summer. The Latin name Inachis io means, Io, Daughter of Inachus. In Greek myth Io was a nymph and priestess watched over by Argus Panoptes, a 100-eyed giant and faithful servant of the goddess Hera.

When he was distracted and slain and therefore failed in his duty, Hera had his 100 eyes preserved in the peacock’s tail – and this has transferred from the peacock to the name of the (European) peacock butterfly.

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Grimmia pulvinata with capsules

5. Grey cushioned grimmia in fruit
At the beginning of the year when I decided to observe the details of nature more closely, I started to notice all the various mosses on walls I pass daily on the way to the bus stop. And there, in just one place, on top of a low stone wall separating houses from the pavement, I spotted a small single silver cushion of Grimmia pulvinata. When March came and it was in fruit, I would surely have the nerve to take a picture…

Then in February I passed by one day and it was gone – and I saw it muddy, trampled and squashed into the pavement. It was like losing a friend… (OK, I know, I exaggerate).

In March I saw another very similar patch of silver grimmia and it had cute little bent brown capsules. It was nearly the end of the month before I had the nerve to take my camera with me on the way to work.

It was a wet morning but luckily it brightened up and once I started snapping every scrap of wildlife I could see on the walls and pavements I was in a world of my own – apart from when I hid my camera while passing some workmen.

I have so many pictures they will probably make a blog post in themselves, but best of all, I found there was Grimmia pulvinata everywhere and I just hadn’t noticed.

Grimmia pulvinata with more mature capsules and straighter stalks

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6. Hare
I explored the subject of hares more fully in another blog post this month: From mad March hare to golden hare.

Boxing hares by Cath Inglis - click on the picture to visit the artist's website

Hares can be seen boxing each other in March (and some other times) and it used to be thought that they were male hares fighting over breeding rights to the females, but it now seems it is usually a female boxing the ears of a male, either to say she isn’t ready to mate yet, or maybe to test out his determination!

You can tell hares and rabbits apart quite easily if they are side by side, but of course it’s not always that simple when you see something brown and fluffy running around a field.

Most people would describe rabbits as more cuddly. Hares are bigger and more athletic, their ears are particularly long and they have black markings on their fur and a longer, less round tail than the classic white bunny scut.

Their habits are also very different. Rabbits live in large numbers underground in burrows while hares are more solitary and make a nest on the ground, sometimes of flattened grass, called a form. This goes with their breeding habits, as rabbit “kits” are born blind, hairless and helpless, safe underground, while baby hares or “leverets” are born with fur and with their eyes open so they are up and running quite quickly.

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Tame violet in a pot in flower in March and the dark leaves of wild violet (Viola riviniana)

7. Sweet violet
We have dark-leaved wild common violets (Viola riviniana) in our garden on the woodland’s edge, but they won’t be flowering until April. We also have a cultivated violet in a pot, which flowers from February or earlier. Neither smells as the sweet violet (Viola odorata), which is used for perfumes, does.

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Pussy willow - silvery-grey male flowers of certain Salix species

8. Flowers of sallow
As a child on walks through the deep lanes of South East Wales, I used to call these silver-grey furry flowers pussy willows. In early spring the hedgerows were full of these alongside hazel catkins or “lambs’ tails”.

Both of these are the male flowers of the plants, producing pollen, but on the willow male and inconspicuous female flowers are on different plants, while on hazel they are both on the same plant.

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Marsh marigold or kingcup (Caltha palustris) - an illustration from C A M Lindman's Flora

9. Marsh marigold
I don’t think I have ever seen one of these in the wild, either as a child or now. The marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) is apparently also known as Kingcup, Mayflower, May-blobs, Mollyblobs and Water-bubbles.

Its flowers look like big buttercups (Ranunculus repens), although the leaves are very different. But the leaves look a lot like those of the lesser celandine I have in the garden, but again that is a much smaller plant (Ranunculus ficaria).

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10. Wheatear
Oh dear, I have never seen a wheatear, either. This is a migrant, coming to Britain to breed in summer, overwintering in Africa. It is most likely to be found on uplands on open ground.

The Latin name is Oenanthe oenanthe and it is a member of the chat and thrush family (Turdidae).

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11. String of toad spawn
I feel ever so sorry for toads. They normally travel back to where they were born in order to spawn, between January and April and will only cross the road between dusk and dawn and when the temperature is above five degrees celsius.

Many toad routes have been built on and I have to admit our house blocks such a route. For this reason I have seen fewer and fewer toads in the road over the years. I’m surprised any can get through the row of houses – I wonder if they travel under the houses, through the drains.

But then their real problems begin as they have to cross several main roads to reach water. Once about 10 years ago at dusk as we were going out I saw a pair of mating toads in the middle of the road. I did try to lift them and move them to safety, but in pairs they are so very heavy and squishy-feeling. So I gave up and as we walked away a car came around the corner and we heard a shocking popping sound. Oh dear…

Strings of toad-spawn of Bufo bufo by Mike Krueger

This year the toads were apparently on the move a bit later than in recent milder winters but toad spawn is now starting to appear. I am not sure I have ever seen it, but when I was in junior school we would put frog spawn in a jam jar and watch as the tadpoles hatched. Frogspawn is made up of lots of round jelly globs, while toadspawn is in long strings.

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12. Scarlet elf-cup fungus

This is a stonking red fungus! But it’s not as big as it looks – usually 2cm to a maximum 5cm. I love fungi, but encounter them so rarely. I must be eternally vigilant…

Here’s a good website for identifying British fungi:
www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/fungi

Scarlet elf-cup fungus (Sarcoscypha coccinea or very closely rleated Sarcoscypha austriaca)

All in all, although I haven’t been able to spot many of the items in the 1940s sketchbook, March has been a revelation in some ways and is concentrating my mind to memorise all those Latin names…

See other months in the Wildlife Through the Year archive