HOW TO SPOT THE FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING

We each have our own symbol of spring that tells us it has first arrived. In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer wrote: “For when that they may hear the birdes sing/ And see the flowers and the leaves spring/ That bringeth into hearte’s remembrance/ A manner ease, medled with grievance, mingled with sorrow/ And lusty thoughtes full of great longing.”

For me it is a chiffchaff, which I always first hear in the woods behind my house. It is always in the third week of March when the tiny bird’s onomatopoeic refrain begins to echo out among the treetops. The chiffchaff is one of the easiest birds to identify by sound because it belts out its name in its call.

For the nature writer and broadcaster Kate Bradbury it is frogspawn and in recent weeks she has been inundated with sightings. “Frogspawn reawakens a childishness in us and a sense of awe and wonderment,” says Bradbury, who is patron of the charity Froglife and author of Wildlife Gardening: for everyone and everything. “It is just really lovely to forget everything and be focused on frogspawn. For me it helps distract from the misery of winter.”

Another harbinger of spring that Bradbury is currently looking out for is the hairy-footed flower bee – a solitary insect of which the females are all black and fluffy with bright orange legs and the males more ginger and boasting a little white moustache. You will find them feeding on the nectar of primrose, hyacinth or the early spring flowers.

Bradbury is also keeping an eye out for the solitary queen bumblebees slowly emerging from hibernation after six long months without food. The insects will head in particular for crocuses to feed and sometimes she has discovered them sleeping inside the flower when it closes overnight.

She describes the discovery of the sleeping bees as “adorable” but as with other signs of the season they serve a wider purpose, be it the first frogspawn, a cuckoo’s call or the trees coming into leaf. “Biologically as humans we have used these spring markers for millennia to let us know that better times are ahead,” she says.