Spring is in full swing and nature is doing its thing!
Flowers and wildlife are emerging again after the cold winter months
Lis Speight from the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) explains what wildlife to look out for near you this month
SPRING is in full swing, insects are emerging from winter hibernation, flowers are bursting into life and birds are migrating, with mating in mind.
How many of our April species will you see or hear this month?
Beautiful bluebells
One of the most joyous experiences of the English spring is walking through a carpet of bluebells in sundappled woodland.
The bluebell spends most of the year as a bulb underground in ancient woodland, only emerging to flower and leaf from April onwards.
Millions of bulbs may exist in one bluebell wood.
We are lucky to have beautiful displays at numerous BBOWT reserves including Sydlings Copse near Oxford, and Bowdown Woods near Newbury.
On the wing in spring
Look out for swallows returning to the UK from their winters in Africa.
They feed on small, flying insects, and are often found
near farmland or grassland, particularly if there’s water nearby.
According to the British Trust for Ornithology, females look for males with the most symmetric tails to mate with! Cuckoos make an astonishing journey each year, flying to Africa for the winter and returning to the UK each spring.
The females find another bird’s nest (often a reed warbler or dunnock), remove one of the existing eggs and lay one of their own, mimicking the original.
She then leaves the ‘host species’ to bring up her chick – which also removes any other eggs from the nest soon after it hatches to ensure the deception is successful.
Sadly, cuckoo numbers are declining in Britain and the bird’s familiar two-note call has been lost from many of its former haunts.
Insects to spot
Ladybirds are a gardener’s friend, feasting on aphids.
The 16-spot ladybird is a small (3-4mm) species, favouring grassland containing hedgerows, where it is often found on flowers.
The dark-edged bee-fly, or ‘large bee-fly’, looks rather like a bumblebee, with a long, straight proboscis that it uses to feed on nectar from spring flowers, such as primroses and violets.
It is on the wing in the early spring, when it can often be seen in sunny patches.
In flight, it is even more like a bee as it produces a high-pitched buzz.
Reptiles and mammals
The slow worm is neither a worm nor a snake, but is, in fact, a legless lizard.
Slow worms can be found in heathland, grassland, woodland edges and rides where they hunt for invertebrates to eat.
The mating season for slow worms kicks off in April or May and courtship may last for as long as 10 hours!
Females incubate the eggs internally, giving birth to an average of eight young in summer.
Look out for them at Greenham Common, Padworth Common and our Warburg Nature
Reserve near Henley. On warmer spring evenings bats will be out flying over gardens and parks looking for insects. The common pipistrelle is easy to spot flitting across the sky just as it’s getting dark.
Even though these are tiny they can eat around 3,000 insects every night!
While you’re walking through woods this April, keep a lookout for fox cubs.
Most cubs are born in midMarch, and this is the time they start to emerge.
The cubs are naturally very playful, so if you can find a good vantage point from which to watch, you can see them pouncing on each other!
For more information on where to see wildlife near you and how to help nature on your patch, visit the trust’s website: bbowt.org.uk