Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 47

ONE OF THE first hedgerow shrubs to show leaves and flowers is the cherry-plum. Here and there bright green leaves are already appearing along the twigs, and the brilliant white flowers will soon follow. Cherry-plum is often confused with blackthorn because the flowers are similar, but the dense masses of blackthorn flowers come out well before the leaves, and the blackthorn twigs are far more spiny. Also, the blackthorn is unlikely to be in flower for another month yet. Tightly woven blackthorn hedges full of young twigs are like lines of misty purple along the field edges just now.

Flocks of black-headed gulls are still out in the fields, all standing facing the wind so that their feathers do not get ruffled. In winter they spread all over Britain except onto mountain tops, and many come here from as far away as Poland or Russia. Some of them now have almost the complete chocolate-coloured hood of their summer plumage. They will soon be returning to their noisy nesting colonies, which are found not only among sand dunes and on saltmarshes along the coast but also inland on the reedy edges of lakes and tarns.