Page 9 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #05

WILD SPRING

ALSO LOOK
Q SLOWWORM
HIDE AND SEEK OUT FOR…
Neither slow nor worms, these handsome
legless lizards have super-smooth bodies with a PURPLE HAZE
lovely coppery or golden shimmer. You’re most Traditionally associated with
likely to meet one while digging a flowerbed or Easter,the pasqueflower
compost heap, or you could carefully lift up bits usually blooms throughout
of old corrugated iron, carpet or planks, which April.Rather like a giant
are favoured basking sites. Now is the mating crocus,it favours short
season and if your view lasts any longer than chalk grassland and
a split-second, you might be able to ascertain is now a great
Q KINGFISHER
the sex: males are often spangled in pale blue, rarity.One of the
HALCYON DAYS while females have a darker belly and flanks. best UK sites is
GET INVOLVED Discover how to help slowworms and Hertfordshire’s
“Colour-giver, fire-bringer, flame-flicker, Britain’s other reptiles at www.arc-trust.org Therfield Heath
river’s quiver”. In his bestseller The Lost – an inspiring
Words, Robert Macfarlane conjures up place managed
the almost impossibly bright plumage by the local
of the halcyon bird, or kingfisher. This community.
sparrow-sized species is guaranteed
to light up the dullest of days, whether SPRING SWARMS
perched in a waterside goat willow or Visit a wetland or damp
streaking past. But its numbers are well scrubby woodland in late
down after Britain’s Arctic blast in early April and you might notice
March – frozen water sounds a death clouds of black flies hanging
knell for kingfishers – making sightings in the air.These are St
this year all the more precious. Look out Mark’s flies.Note their very
for males passing tiddlers to their mates distinctive flight silhouette
as gifts, giving them vital energy when with curious dangly legs.
forming eggs and feeding chicks.
TOP TIP For advice on spotting kingfishers, BATS ABOUT
visit www.discoverwildlife.com/kingfishers Pipistrelles and other bats
are fully active again.For a
change,why not watch them
Q SWALLOW in the half-light just before
dawn – it’s a good time to
EARLY BIRDS see bats gathering around
The welcome warbling twitter of swallows – rooftops before they enter
such a contented sound – is again coming roosts.Watch a video of a
from wires and rooftops across Britain. These dawn swarm at www.bats.
birds have completed just about the longest org.uk/pages/sunset_
journey of any of our summer migrants, having sunrise_survey.html
flown from as far away as the southernmost
tip of Africa. According to the State of the DRAGON DANCING
UK’s Birds 2017 report, swallows now return Our most spectacular
15 days earlier than in the 1960s, in response amphibian has started
to steadily warming spring temperatures. its underwater flamenco
Recoveries of ringed birds show that most courtship.The great crested
first-years turn up within a few kilometres newt is strictly protected
of where they hatched. and nocturnal – to glimpse
FIND OUT MORE Read the BTO’s bird migration blog: one at the surface of a pond,
www.btomigrationblog.blogspot.co.uk patiently scan the surface
with a torch after dark.

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