Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 57

WEEPING WILLOWS ARE beginning to put out fresh green leaves, only two or three months after losing last year’s leaves, which still lie like small purple fish on the ground or in the water beneath them. On Lombardy poplars – the tall, slender poplars that line French roads, and also stand along many field edges in Britain – the flower buds are opening, and crimson catkins are coming out of them. These catkins are all male flowers, for the Lombardy poplar is normally without female flowers, and multiplies by putting out shoots. It is missing from the index of some tree identification books, since it is only a variety of the black poplar.

Starlings are changing colour for the summer: they are becoming less spotty, and more black and glossy, while their beaks are turning a brighter yellow. The male’s song is also getting richer, with occasional musical phrases breaking out among the usual whirring, whistling and clacking. He will sometimes sit close to a hole in a tree or a hollow under the tiles, singing to keep other starlings out of this desirable spring nesting place. Starlings that came here from the Continent for the winter are starting to turn homeward.