Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 78

A GREEN TINT is appearing on trees and hedges. Hawthorns are sprouting more widely. On horse chestnut trees, the first of the big sticky buds are opening, and the leaves when they emerge look at first like green paws. On weeping willow trees there is a faint wash of green on the drooping boughs.

There are flower buds on the crab apple trees: while they are still closed they look like little pink cherries but they will open into white flowers. Sallow bushes are turning into golden lamps on the riverbanks, as the button-like silvery catkins that line the twigs swell everywhere into bushy flowers covered with yellow pollen.

At dawn, blackbirds, song thrushes and robins are now singing all together but as soon as it is light enough they come down to the ground and start searching for food. This is not yet the full dawn chorus, as there are some individuals of these species that have not started singing yet, and there are also more wrens, chaffinches and greenfinches to join in, besides the summer visitors to come in April.