Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 22

HAZEL CATKINS ARE beginning to turn yellow as the pollen forms in them. But even on the same bushes as these loose-swinging catkins, others are still small and hard. Last year’s lime tree seeds, like miniature drumsticks attached to a wing, and last year’s hornbeam seeds, like Chinese lanterns, can also still be seen here and there on the branches. On ash trees, there are still dense clusters of seeds, or keys, very dark and damp-looking.

Black-headed gulls are beginning to acquire their chocolate-brown summer hoods. In winter, when many of them come inland, they have only a small mark behind the eye, but already more of the head is getting darker. Sometimes this process begins with another dark mark next to the first, like a pair of inverted commas. Juvenile black-headed gulls can be picked out by the brown bar on their wings and their black tail-band. Some of them stay on playing fields when the adults have gone to their nesting colonies.