Butterbur (Petasites hybridus)

Roadside ditches and riverbanks are strewn with pink butterbur flowers this month. We tend to forget that our ancestors used plants not just in cooking and medicine, but also for cleaning, dyeing, stuffing, packaging, smoking and much else. In the days before fridges, butterbur leaves, which are huge and lotus-like and appear later in the spring, served as a cool wrapper for butter and other fresh foods.

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Common chiffchaff

Odds are, birds you hear will be migrants freshly arrived from their Mediterranean winter range, though the BTO estimates up to 15,000 chiffchaffs now overwinter in Britain, mainly in the south.

Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa)

Thorniness is, of course, highly desirable in a hedge, which is why two of the most widespread hedgerow trees are blackthorn and hawthorn. Their leafing and flowering patterns are reversed. Blackthorn flowers first, then unfurls its leaves; hawthorn greens up well before it blossoms.

Common toad (Bufo bufo)

Countless warty bodies will soon be stirring. Unlike frogs, toads only visit water to breed, and the timing of their annual migration varies enormously from year to year, according to the weather in early spring. The ‘big push’ – when toads move en masse to ancestral breeding ponds and lakes – occurs on damp, drizzly evenings when the temperature at sunset hovers at or above 7–8°C

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Hairy-footed flower bee

​Warm March sunshine should rouse a few garden bees from their winter slumber, including this bumblebee-lookalike. It has unusually long-haired legs, but they aren’t a feature you tend to notice, particularly as this solitary bee likes to dart rapidly between flowers. 

Common dog violet (Viola riviniana)

Keen botanists know to examine the backwards-pointing extension, or spur, behind each flower. It is pale in common dog violets, dark in early dog violets. There are also sweet violets with scented blooms.

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella)

​Untidiness suits farmland birds such as the yellowhammer, just coming into breeding plumage. To help the yellowhammer, we need more weedy arable fields, scuffed-up pasture, spilt seeds and unruly wildflower margins, preferably with rewilded, overgrown hedges, at the bottom of which the female will soon be nestbuilding. Close by, her gaudy mate sings his short but sweet song, over and over

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Photo by Amanda Hopwood

Competition Time!!  A photograph of a winter tree silhouette

Two categories: Adults and U/16
(please give your age in the u/16 category)

Submit by 28 February to [email protected]

Prize information to follow shortly....