March 2007

March sees the return of many of our spring and summer nesting birds which have been wintering in Africa and the Mediterranean region. By the middle of the month the cheerful double note of the chiffchaff will be heard in local woods as the slim olive-coloured warbler searches the expanding flower buds of sallow (pussy willow) for small larvae and insects.

The same golden sallow blossoms provide nectar for butterflies, moths and bees emerging from hibernation. At night if you venture out to where there are flowering sallows and shine a torch beam on to the catkins you’ll see a host of moths with marvellous popular names such as quakers; herald; yellow horned; early grey and Hebrew character, their eyes shining like little rubies as they feast on the heady nectar.

Butterflies on the wing on warm days, tempted from their hibernating shelter, are brimstone; comma; small tortoiseshell; and peacock. This spring you are also likely to see some red admirals which have hibernated and which have appeared on warm winter days in gardens and sheltered woodland margins. In fact there were red admiral sightings every month from September to March. These were the “descendants” from last year’s migrants from the continent. It seems we must now class the red admiral as a true resident rather than a regular immigrant with a late summer brood.

Wheatears are passing north along the coast from winter quarters in Africa en-route to nesting areas in the Breckland sandy heaths in Suffolk and Norfolk or the northern moors. Look for their tell-tale white rumps as they flit along sea walls, beaches and coastal pastures or from post to post. Good places to look for these early passage birds are Walton Naze; East Mersea; St Osyth; Colne Point; Tollesbury and Goldhangar. The first of returning sand martins usually turn up before the end of March at Abberton Reservoir, Ardleigh Reservoir and Fingringhoe Wick.

The first wild flowers are brightening the countryside but drainage and the disappearance of many of the damp meadows and swampy hollows, once a feature of many river and stream valleys, has led to the decline of one of our finest early flowers. The marsh marigold (or kingcup) was once common but nowadays you’ll have to make a special search for the kingcup’s glossy golden blooms in the few little marshy corners under alders and willows which have survived.

Yellow is the keynote colour in March and April. As well as the kingcups, which are members of the buttercup family, there are primroses, lesser celandines and coltsfoot blooms to gladden the eye and cheer the spirit.

The yellow theme is continued by male brimstone butterflies just out of winter hibernation in evergreen bushes and ivy clumps. Although the yellow males are conspicuous, female brimstones are greenish-white and can easily be overlooked as an early white butterfly. Brimstone caterpillars feed on the leaves of two species of buckthorn bushes neither of which is common in Essex. The male brimstones range far and wide to find females with which to pair in the spring and also to find where the all-important buckthorn bushes grow. The brimstone is, in fact, Britain’s longest-lived butterfly species. The butterflies emerge in March and April. Some remain alive until June thus having survived almost a year.

There is already a lot of frantic frog and toad mating and spawning in ponds and lakes. In fact this year there was plenty of spawn to be seen as early as February. Congratulations to those splendid spring rescuers who annually save thousands of toads from traffic wheels as amphibians migrate to their breeding ponds.

I continue to see buzzards in NE Essex, a further indication of the continued spread of this fine raptor into the eastern counties. Nesting has been confirmed in many parts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk in the past five years or so.

Latest Updates

10/03/07

On March 8 Philip Smith and Hugh Owen saw a male brimstone butterfly and a comma at Loshes Meadow Essex Wildlife Trust Reserve near lamarsh, and a peacock butterfly at Nayland.

15/03/07

Three chiffchaffs were seen (and heard) in Hillhouse Wood, West Bergholt on March 11. A comma butterfly was seen in the wood on the same day and another in a lexden garden on March 12.

A yellow horned moth on a birch tree trunk. This is one of the moths flying in March and which feeds at night on sallow

Wheatears should be looked for along the coast and some inland heaths and grasslands as they migrate to nesting areas further north from wintering quarters in Africa

A clump of marsh marigolds (or kingcups), an attractive spring flower of marshy places which is in decline in Essex

A male brimstone butterfly has a spring feed on a clover bloom after hibernating in an evergreen bush

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