April nature notes 2011

by David Tidmarsh - 20:57 on 24 April 2011

                                       Ken’s Nature notes.

We are blessed with Colour everywhere at the moment, wonderful displays from the Cherry blossoms of pink and white, sadly by the time you read this they will probably be going over and have passed their best.

The next joy to behold will be the fresh new growth of the new leaves unfolding before our very eyes. Beech leaves look so delicate now as even the new seed shell has a soft touch to it, this will soon turn, when ripe, to a tough shell protecting the new seeds.

Sycamore buds that have survived the strong winds are also showing off their new leaves, soon they will be blocking out the bareness of the trees and giving nesting birds a bit more protection from predators.

Lesser Celandine clumps give us a flash of yellow flowers on the woodland floor, as kids we would just call them buttercups, we were not far wrong as they are members of the buttercup family, but they have a more open flower, totally useless for telling anyone if you like butter.

Most of the hawthorn hedges have their new blanket of foliage now, which will help shelter new chicks in their nests from the odd shower of rain.

In our tree nursery we have had two families of Blackbirds nesting and successfully rearing their chicks, in piles of branches that were cut last year from trees and hedges that had grown too large. We were hoping to have chipped these branches up by now, but nature has the upper hand, so in about two weeks time the young Blackbirds will have flown, I just hope they don’t go straight back in and have their second broods in the wood piles.

The Daffodils have now past their best, but the road sides, especially leading up to Washington, now have glorious displays of Dandelions, I know these are intolerable weeds in a garden but what a colourful display they are giving to the traveller.

Wych Elm trees are showing off their new growth of papery winged fruits which hold the new seed of life for the next season, these are a very light green and stand out from the normal green of the leaves. They seem to be more resistant to the destructive Dutch Elm disease than other Elms.

New golden growth is also visible in the scotch pine trees as they produce their seed in their new pine cones.

Most nest building will be well under way by now with some birds already considering their second brood, this has been helped on by the glorious sunny weather that we have been enjoying , hopefully this will also provide plenty of food for the young chicks.

A thought came to me this morning as I watched Rooks and Jackdaws collecting twigs and discarded paper rappers to “feather their nests” It set me wondering about the colourful silver paper chocolate wrappers that might be lining the nests, and would the young chicks, emerged from their shells be thinking I must have just missed the party!  

Enjoy the sun.

Ken

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