Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 61

BADGERS ARE SPRING-CLEANING their burrows or ‘setts’. In the autumn, they took in bracken or fallen leaves to make a warm steamy chamber for the winter, but now they are pushing it out with their black and white snouts.

They are also pushing out a lot of earth, and taking in new moss and early plants such as dog’s mercury. The badger cubs are about to be born, and they will need plenty of fresh, clean bedding. The cubs will not appear above ground until April or May, by which time they will look like small versions of their parents.

Oak trees are still quite bare, but the pale brown buds are swelling slightly. Once they open, the cluster of buds at the end of each twig will go on producing new bursts, or ‘flushes’, of leaves throughout the summer. There are many tiny insect eggs on the oak twigs and branches, and blue tits and long-tailed tits are busy searching for them.

On holm oaks, which are evergreens, the dark leaves are looking dry and shrunken as winter comes to an end, but there are minute buds on the twigs from which paler green leaves will spring.