Tower and Town, April 2022 (view the full edition)Nature Notes 'April come she will'April comes just when we need her: sunshine, blue skies, the sounds and smells of spring, longer and warmer days. That’s the idea, but as like as not showers, cold winds and grey skies will contrive to spoil the fun. April’s potential thirty days may reduce to twenty decent ones and natural history enthusiasts begin to panic with so much to see and hear and record. For birdwatchers it is a big month for recording our incoming summer visitors: the warblers, pipits, chats, flycatchers and wagtails, and those iconic aerial feeders the swallows and martins. Will we hear the plaintive call of the cuckoo and the exotic song of the nightingale in the usual spots? Will birds return on the usual dates, or will there be a population “crash” as happened in 1969 with common whitethroats, when two thirds of the British population failed to return. Swallows take about six weeks to make the journey from Africa, covering about 200 miles a day and roosting at night in favoured reed beds. We nervously await their return, but will there be fewer than last year resulting from casualties along the migratory route? Stone curlews will have already arrived in March on traditional downland sites, but subsequent unseasonal weather can spell disaster as they start nesting. Meanwhile it is the breeding season for our much-loved garden birds: the robin, wren, song thrush and blackbird. I can usually reckon to see red admiral and small tortoiseshell butterflies on sunny mornings, and orange tips and lemon-coloured brimstones complementing the cowslips and emerging king cups. The wild daffodils I see in West Woods in March will be fading, and I will need to catch up with the colony of lady’s smocks at the entrance to Savernake Forest and the early purple orchids at my local Nature Reserve: then there are violets and wood anemones peeking out amongst the tangled woodland vegetation. 
In the final days of April I have sometimes had a tip-off about badger or fox cubs emerging from their earths, and whatever negatives we can raise about these animals the sight of an undisturbed family playing in the half-light is delightful, and one to be shared with our children and grandchildren. It’s the end of the month and somebody usually reminds me that on the Cricklade Meadows the snake’s head fritillaries have been wonderful, but are now past their prime….alas, alack, April has ended! Robin Nelson |