March 2008

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The traditional winds of March, especially if they blow from the south, help the arrival of birds which spend the winter months in Africa and return in March and April to nest with us in the summer.

Towards the end of the month or even from mid March nowadays, look out for returning wheatears. There is usually quite a strong spring passage along coastal Essex peaking in the third week of April but expect to see some early arrivals in March flitting along the sea walls or bobbing along boundary posts with their tell-tale white rumps.

Wheatears breed on the Breckland heaths of Suffolk and Norfolk and on the northern moors. In recent years returning spring migrant birds are arriving even earlier than in the past. There was a report of a swallow seen in coastal Kent in the last week of February and some wheatears reported from Hampshire and Dorset in the last week of February. The earliest Essex swallows and sand martins are usually in the third week of March.

Expect the first chiffchaffs hack in our woods and wayside spinneys by mid March as the slim little olive warblers, with their cheery double note, search the expanding blossoms of sallow (pussy willow) for tiny insects and larvae. they are fresh back from winter quarters in Africa. Willow warblers, or at least the vanguard birds, are returning to our woods before the end of March, their delightful song cadences brightening the woodland spring chorus. In recent years willow warblers are less common as a nesting species in Essex favouring a more northerly breeding distribution.

Woodland flowers are tending towarrds earlier blooming now we are having generally milder winters. Wood anemones, traditionally April flowers, are starting in March. Good displays can be seen at Hillhouse Wood, West Bergholt by the end of the month and in April and another prime site is Chalkney Wood, Earls Colne. The old name for the wood anemone is wind flower as its pink-flushed hanging blooms nod in the March breezes. The flowers bend down at night and in wet weather to protect the pollen inside. Fertilisation is usually carried out by insects but even without their aid the stamens can reach the stigmas so that the flowers can either be cross or self-fertilised.

Another woodland plant which produces its blooms in March is the dog's mercury which has tiny green blooms. The sexes are on different plants, the male flowers with stamens on a spike one or two inches long, the female on much shorter stalks almost hidden in the axils of the leaves. The flowers have no petals. The dog's mercury depends on the wind to carry its pollen from the stamens to fertilise the pistils.

The appropriately-named early moth is one of the few moths to be seen on mild nights in March. Top: Male; below flightless female with stumpy wings. Larval foodplants are blackthorn and hawthorn.

The marsh marigold (or kingcup) is an increasingly uncommon spring flowering plant of ponds and wet places. Search for it in March and April.

Wheatears are passing along the Essex Coast in March heading for nesting heaths and moors to the north. They often use rabbit burrows.

Swallows are usually back from Africa in April but some have been reported as early as last week of February this year.

Sand Martins should be looked for at Abberton Reservoir and other reed-fringed lakes in third week of March, just returned from Africa.

Wood anemones will have some early blooms in March ahead of the main April display.

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