Spring – Page 2 – Enviro-Mentalist

First signs of Spring

The sun came out today, and for the first time this year there was a definite warmth to it. Along with the sun came the first of the season’s bumblebees.

These are the queen bees foraging for food before looking for a suitable nest site. Although much of the media’s attention has been on the plight of the honeybee (mainly due to the huge potential losses for commercial beekeepers), bumblebees also play a huge part in plant pollination. The fact that bumblebees do not stockpile honey for an overwintering colony has led to them being less recognised as an endangered species. In fact, according to Wikipedia, three of our native bumblebees have already become extinct and another six are in serious decline.

It is therefore of vital importance that we garden with bumblebees in mind and try to provide a range of plants that flower throughout the year, particularly in early spring when the queen bees are about. If you are stuck for ideas why not try the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s website which lists a number of bee friendly plants. If you would like to add in some earlier flowering species why not plant some crocus and snowdrops in a sunny part of your garden, with sweet box (sarcocca confusa) and clematis armandii in shadier parts. Not only will you be helping the bees, but you will brighten your own day with the sight and scent of these early flower plants.

Spring flower surprises

In my last post I mentioned that I had been out and about looking for a cowslip to take a picture of and had failed miserably. This may seem a bit of a strange problem given that I had been expounding on the fact that there was a multitude of the little harbingers of spring about. Well, there are, just not within a short walk of my house. I started on the industrial estate where I had seen some on my way home. The problem is that I could only find one, it was looking a bit sorry for itself and I couldn’t get a picture without an incredibly unphotogenic industrial unit in the background.
Never fear I thought, I will find some in the grassy area near the reservoir and posh houses, or on the verges on the main road. Ha! All I found were dandelions and daisies, pretty, but not what I was after. Where was I going wrong? According to Wikipedia (I have just checked this in case I was being a muppet and was looking in the wrong place) as well as somehow apparently being used for the treatment of headaches, whooping cough and tremors Primula Veris (cowslip) is ‘a low growing herbaceous perennial plant…found…[in] open fields, meadows’. Not such a muppet.

In case you are thinking why didn’t she just go back to where she found them in the first place, the clouds were grey and threatening rain (and delivering hail) and I only wanted to take a quick snapshot, I thought it would be easy!

Still, all was not lost, I took the photograph of the celandine shown in the previous post, found some grape hyacinth growing photogenically at the base of a tree (shown below left, but must go back and take a better picture with my other camera) and discovered a host of wood anemones (below right) growing in a spot I discovered a few months back that was covered in winter aconites. All in all, not a bad afternoon’s work.

grapehyacinth woodanenome

Natural Highlights to the Working Day

I have been particularly busy at work this week due to customer demands and staff absences. This has been made worse by the warm air and the blue sky taunting me from outside.

However, when taking a breather and having a look out across the car park and the small amount of green edging the site I spotted a couple of invaders – red-legged partridges. Now I realise that these are pretty common, but it was the pleasure that seeing them somewhere unexpected that made them special. They were running at some speed across the car park – spooked by the incoming lorries, at one point passing about 10 feet in front of my window. Added to that was the joy that pointing these out to someone else brought (especially as he thinks that I make the birds up).

Whilst I was trying to see where they had gone to I had the unexpected bonus of seeing my first Brimstone butterflies of the year dancing in the air near a pair of carrion crows picking up nesting materials.

Highlights like this almost make it worthwhile going to work.

Spring has sprung.

OK, so maybe it is obvious to most people that it is now spring, but some of us have our own signs that the season has changed (for me Winter comes with the arrival of goosanders). So, the clocks have gone forward, the daffodils are out and, yesterday, so was the sun, and it was warm, but to me, the telltale sign of spring occurred this morning on my way to work. It was the sound of a chiffchaff calling. I stopped to listen and make sure, but there really is no mistaking the call of a chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita).

According to the Bird Guides website which has pictures and more information about the chiffchaff, the best way to distinguish this little brown job from the equally small and brown Willow Warbler is by its black legs. In my experience I rarely see one before I have heard it and the call is enough to distinguish it from anything else.

I have seen them in Winter, but they usually return to nest in Spring, the ones landing in these shores are thought to have wintered in southern Europe and Africa. So, the next time you are out and about listen for the call of one of the earlier and most vociferous migrants to these shores.

Frogspawn

I have anxiously been listening out for the sounds of Spring – the birds are singing, the expected flowers are starting to show up in various places and it is therefore with some anticipation that I have been listening out every morning for the sounds of frogs singing in the pond.

Other people had seen frog spawn in their ponds weeks ago, I was beginning to wonder if it was the fact that I had a north facing garden or whether we had upset the frogs by renovating their home last Summer. We spotted our first frogs last week, and this morning we saw frogspawn. See the photoevidence – please accept my apologies for the poor quality.

Now the worry starts – we have had the pond for a few years now, but apart from some tadpoles from some imported spawn we have not had any tadpoles yet. The frost has usually killed it all off in the past, but we are hoping that the fact that we have deepened the pond and the spawn is near the bottom may give them a chance this year. Fingers crossed!