Staffordshire in Spring

Spring is usually said to start at the beginning of March, and the 21st of March is the Spring Equinox, the date on which day and night are of equal length. This season is when days get longer, and the spring sunshine brings growth and greenery. Birdsong reaches a peak, and many flowers appear, attracting insects, including bees and butterflies.

We await this time of year to immerse ourselves in a carpet of bluebells that overtake our woodlands and the golden trumpets of daffodils appearing in our fields and road verges.

Birds in Spring

We wave goodbye to our thrushes, such as redwings, fieldfares and mistle thrushes. They've picked the berry trees clean and head back to Russia or Scandinavia for spring and summer. But as the UK warms up in spring, we expect a whole foray of birds to appear ready for summer. We can expect to see these birds spread across Staffordshire, from our lakes and reservoirs, to our gardens and nature reserves.

Great crested grebe weed dance © Andrew Parkinson/2020VISION

Jon Hawkins - Surrey Hills Photography

Nightjar nesting on the ground, surrounded by twigs

David Tipling/2020VISION

WildNet - Margaret Holland

Love is in the air! The great crested grebe mating ritual is made up of two stages, firstly great crested grebes, who are monogamous for the year, can be seen performing the first half of the ritual as early as January. This display is centred on strengthening the pair bond, and a number of distinct behaviours are recognised. The head-shaking display is probably the most familiar; in this, the head plumage is fanned into a ruff before the birds then face each other and shake their heads from side to side.

The most elaborate of the great-crested grebe’s displays is the ‘weed ceremony’ which, as its name suggests, involves weed! It takes place just before the pair begin to build their nest platform when the two birds make a slow and deliberate dive to collect weed, before returning to the water’s surface and swimming towards each other, their heads held low to the surface. As they meet, the birds rise from the water and stand almost fully upright chest to chest while treading water... An amazing sight to see!

Chiffchaffs usually arrive in early March but each year we have more and more reports of them overwintering in the UK. Those that do migrate arrive in the UK in March from the Mediterranean and Western Africa. Males often arrive up to three weeks earlier in preparation for the summer breeding season and are often one of the last migratory birds to leave in September.

Another visitor most often heard, but rarely seen, during dusk on warm evenings arrives here in April from Africa.

The nocturnal nightjar is one of our strangest birds. This wide-mouthed, insect-eating visitor to heathlands and young conifer plantations, spends their days sitting on the floor, where they nest. Cryptically camouflaged in greys and browns, they look just like a fallen log and are almost impossible to spot during the day. But at dusk, a strange sound starts up: a mechanical whirring, almost like a distant engine, and just as the darkness arrives, the nightjar appears.

Two adult Arctic terns watching over a juvenile Arctic tern

Arctic terns have one of the longest migrations of any bird. They arrive in spring, choosing to breed either in the Arctic or the UK during summer, before travelling all the way to the Antarctic for the winter. Their journey ranges from 44,000 miles to 59,000 miles per year – the longest migration recorded for any animal. As a red-listed species we are doing as much as possible to help them in Staffordshire, including installing tern rafts (artificial rafts) for them to nest on, with the benefit of the rafts rising and falling as water levels fluctuate. These can be seen in a few of our reservoirs and nature reserves reserves.

Mammals in spring

After using up their fat reserves over winter, badgers become much more active in spring. Badgers spend winter mostly in their setts, occasionally leaving to forage for food, but by late winter/early spring they will be out foraging every night and feeding any cubs born in January or February. This time of year is also when badger deaths on roads are at their highest; with milder weather and more food to find, badgers will travel further and cross roads in search of food.

During April, we can expect the cubs to be exploring the full extent of the sett. They will also start to venture outside to discover new scents and sounds. May is the best time to see badgers as they emerging during daylight. Dusk is a good time to spot a sow (female) as she encourages her cubs out of the sett to explore and play with the other cubs from the clan.

Mad March hares! Did you know the boxing matches often captured by photographers and seen on farmland are actually between a female and a male?

During spring males can be seen chasing females across fields. The females get quite tired of this and instigate the fight themselves to fend off the males. The best place to see boxing hares are open grassy or arable fields, particularly near woodland fringes or decent hedgerows, where the hares can easily find shelter. Outside the boxing season, a pair of binoculars is needed to carefully scan the area for distant hares as they spend much of their time hunkered down in a depression they have dug in the ground called a ‘form’.

Spring colour

During late March and early April, we're incredibly lucky to have the largest colony of native wild daffodils growing at our George's Hayes nature reserve. Wild garlic is the next to flourish, with Bluebells usually flowering from late April to early May (but it does vary from year to year depending on weather and temperatures). Bluebells are one of the last spring flowers to bloom before the woodland canopy closes up and new leaves block out the sunlight. If we have a mild spring, bluebells respond by flowering earlier.

Bluebells are traditionally woodland flowers and can grow very close together, which creates a beautiful sea of bluebells. They prefer the rich, undisturbed soils of long-established woodland, so you're most likely to see them in old and ancient woodland. You might also spot them growing along hedgerows and in fields and gardens where woodlands once stood.

Amazing amphibians

Pond of frogs; early afternoon; clear with slight cloud; 17.03.2011 - Katrina Martin / 2020VISION

Common toads (Bufo bufo), in amplexus (mating), with toad spawn, in a garden pond England: Surrey, Reigate, Doods Road, Doods Place, March, spring, - Linda Pitkin/2020VISION

Common Toad, Bufo bufo, on brick edging in garden, Norfolk - Dawn Monrose

Common frog (Rana temporaria) in garden pond in spring, Warwickshire, UK - Mark Hamblin/2020VISION

Frogspawn can be found in ponds around the UK in late January, February and March, and is a fascinating wildlife spectacle to see.

If you have space to create even a small garden pond, it can be a potential home for spawning frogs and toads, and it is a fun activity to visit each day during spring to see how your garden spawn is developing. Once the tiny tadpoles have hatched, it takes them around 14 weeks to become a frog and slightly longer for toad tadpoles.

The final stage before the tadpole becomes a frog or toad takes approximately a day. They quickly take cover to protect themselves from predators, such as birds of prey, snakes, badgers and otters.

Interesting insects

A large black/blue shiny beetle crawling along a heather stalk. The beetle has a long antenna reaching out away from the stalk.

Black oil beetle at Highgate Common by TJ Ellis

A bumblebee mimic hoverfly on a purple thistle flower. It's a fuzzy black and yellow hoverfly with a white tip to the abdomen, looking just like a bee. It's given away by its large eyes and short antennae

The sandy soils of our heathlands become alive with insects in spring and the black oil beetle is a unique resident at Highgate Common. Having spent the winter underground feeding on bees eggs and food stores, the larvae emerge in spring as adult oil beetles,

The earliest UK butterflies on the wing are the peacock from mid-February and small tortoiseshell from the end of February, With a multitude of other butterflies emerging in March and April, look out for commas, small whites and brimstone butterflies visiting sunny sheltered gardens on warm spring days.

The unsung heroes of the insect world hoverflies also begin to emerge in March and April. Find out more about these fascinating mini beasts in our latest Wild About Gardens booklet, just head to the Wild About Gardens website via the link below.