Black thorn, white flowers

A solid bank of blackthorn flowers looking from the hilltop meadow towards the viewpoint.

The flowers come before the leaves and the blackthorn is at its peak now, 

so hurry along to see it.

There's a lot of it about.

Clues on the path

Although we are encouraged to lift our eyes to see more, sometimes looking at the floor can tell you things.  If you come across little furry items like these, it tells you that you are passing under a male pussy willow tree.

You know it's male for two reasons: 

(a) a close look will show you lots of tiny stamens, which produced pollen and 

(b) the female flowers don't drop off - they develop into seeds.

Such is the fate of the male.

Violets

Violets are blooming at Filnore Woods.
These were at the top of Vilner Lane.

And there were more on the steps leading out of the Valley Woodland 
between post 9 and post 8

The whiskery bits in the middle of the flower always put me in mind of a moustache, 
or the face of a schnauzer dog

Bullfinch

Between posts 12 and 18 at Filnore Woods, I heard a bullfinch singing its quiet whistle song.   The song is usually very quiet and the bird is shy and retiring so it is not often seen.  What a corker, though, if you do see one.  Try this video link from BIRDSONG UK on youtube.

It's hardly surprising they are shy when you consider their historical contacts with humans.  

German foresters used to catch them and train them to whistle folk tunes before selling them at a high price.  They are incredibly good at memorising tunes.

Fruit growers were not so keen on them, however, because bullfinches love to peck fruit tree flowers.   Hundreds were shot.

Elf party

Just over the stream near the white house tool shed I saw a couple of scarlet elf cups on the woodland floor.  

The more I looked, the more I found

There must have been a really good elf party the other night.

Mining in winter

Brambles are to some extent evergreen - they lose some of their leaves in winter but not all.  It's a good time of year to spot the traces left in the leaves by leaf-mining moth larvae.

These tiny caterpillars eat out the fleshy, green stuff between the upper and lower membranes of the leaf, leaving a translucent white trail.   

When they hatch from the egg laid in the leaf by mummy moth, the tunnel they make is quite narrow, but as they grow fatter so does the tunnel.  Eventually they break out and pupate before emerging as adult moths.

If you look at the top photo you can see there were three larvae in the one leaf.

Chiffchaff

Chiffchaffs have arrived at Filnore Woods.  

I heard two of them chiffchaffing competitively on Sunday and several more on Wednesday.

Yesterday was the spring equinox so it's official, SPRING IS HERE !

Pignut

The distinctive early leaves of pignut, one of the creamy white umbellifer flowers.  (Check my post of 27th May 2017.) These leaves will wither away as the stem grows upwards.  The new leaves are also finely divided but different.  

It grows from a small brown knobbly tuber, which pigs and children really like.  Tastes a bit like a hazel nut.  The pigs can scent them out like truffles.

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban says, while offering all the best organic wild foods to Trinculo and Stefano, 'I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts.'  so they were known to be good even in Elizabethan times.  

The patter of tiny colts feet

Coltsfoot flowers appear about now before their leaves.

They look a bit like pale dandelions but they differ by having scaly stems rather than smooth, a daisy-like disc in the middle, and .  .  .  no leaves yet.

Coltsfoot juice was once used to make a cough medicine, and the dried leaves were smoked in pipes (!) as a cure for asthma.  

Waking shrubs

The first shrub to leaf up is usually elder

Hawthorn is also greening up in sheltered spots

And blackthorn's thornless cousins the wild plums and damsons are opening their blossom buds before their leaves.

Blackthorn is following on close behind.

Grassland restoration

Andy and Dave from South Glos Streetcare have enacted huge clearance of brambles and coarse, tussocky grass in the cowshed field at Filnore.  Unfortunately although the remote controlled Robocut will chomp anything it does not clear up the arisings.

So we are left with a layer of bramble shreddings  .  .  .  

.  .  .  .  and cut grass, which have to be raked off to prevent any increase in fertility.  

Wild flowers have a better chance against more vigorous plants like hemlock, hogweed, thistles, willow herb and brambles, if the fertility is lower.

So today 13 of us (a raker's dozen) raked and stacked the arisings into piles, or around trees, or at the edge of the remaining bramble patches.

We cleared a third of it in a morning, so just the remaining two thirds to go.  We need to get it off before the underlying plants grow up through, making it difficult to remove.

This is in preparation for a summer hay cut, when we hope Andy will return with his chugging friend Robocut.

Birdsong

Now that spring is rustling its fingers, the woodland birds are beginning to seek out their territories and maintain ownership by singing.

Great tits are doing their 'teechah, teechah teechah' thing, and I heard greenfinches twittering and fizzing in the leisure centre car park last week.

Greenfinch

Spring shoots and leaves

I'm always putting pictures of primroses on here, because they are so pretty, but here are a few of the other early shoots of woodland flowers just peeping through.  Let's start with the first to appear, Cuckoo Pint, also known as Lords and Ladies, Wild Arum, Parson in the Pulpit, Parson's Pintle and many other names.  It will develop those strange flowers with a green hood in April followed by a stick of poisonous, red berries in autumn.  Recognise it now by the arrowhead shape of the leave, which are sometimes spotted black.

Next up is Goosegrass, Cleavers or Sticky Willy, with its velcro foliage.

Hogweed is showing already

And so is Cow Parsley

  

And of course the ubiquitous stinging nettle

I'll finish with a pretty one.  Bluebells are on the increase at Filnore.  

They won't be in flower till next month but the bunches of spiky leaves are easy to spot.  

These are opposite post 19 under the big beech tree.