March

By Peter Conway

March is the start of spring, but it is not quite yet the flower-filled high spring of April and May. Instead, this is a sort of pre-spring, a time of awakening nature but with mixed weather and temperatures.

In fact, March can have the biggest contrasts between weather of any month of the year. If the sun shines, it can seem almost like summer, and you find yourself casting off the winter woollies and walking in shirtsleeves once again. But then a savage cold snap or driving rain can make it feel like January again.

WEATHER

“March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion” is the old saying, and the traditional pattern is that the month starts with stable weather, perhaps with a touch of welcome warmth, and then degenerates mid month into equinoctal storms of lashing rain (usually in time to spoil 21 March, the first official day of spring).

In recent years, this pattern seems to be no longer valid, however, and the best generalisation about March that can be made is that it alternates relatively warm sunny days with much colder greyer ones when spring seems far away. It is not unusual to get this contrast in the same day.

As Charles Dickens says in chapter 15 of Great Expectations:

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold; when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade”

When the sun does shine, you shed hat, coat and pullover in quick succession. The sky is a deep blue, the birds all seem to be singing and you feel that winter is finally gone and six months of warmer weather stretch before you. Suddenly it is warm enough to sit outside a pub to eat, or to have a picnic on a hillside. You lie down on the grass for the first time since October. By the end of the month, scarfs and gloves are generally no longer needed, though you keep them handy just in case: the same goes for the central heating, which tends to get turned off, and then quickly turned back on again.

Years when March has been relatively benign in this way include 2000 to 2003, and 2009, when there were plenty of sunny days throughout the month. March 2003 was so dry that the countryside was looking very parched and unhappy by the end of the month. 2007 and 2009 were also mainly dry, but the little rainfall that did occur was well enough spaced to keep things green.

While in the early part of the month even sunny days can still be quite cold – 6 or 7 degrees – by mid month they can get positively warm. The transition is often very rapid. In 2005, for example, temperatures went from a few degrees to 20 degrees in the third week, though wintry weather returned for the end of the month, as it did in 2004. In 2008, the temperature had reached the mid teens within a week of a truly Arctic Easter on 21-24 March, and despite a generally cold winter, March 2009 saw temperatures up to 15 degrees quite regularly from mid month onward. Other warm ends to March came in 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2007.

But 2007 perfectly illustrates the other side of March as well. While the month both started and finished with temperatures of 17-18 degrees, there was a sharp cold period from 18-25 March, which produced snow on the 22nd. The following year, Easter fell at this time (21-24 March, the earliest Easter since 1913) and saw northerly winds, snow flurries (some even settling in the Weald), hailstorms and temperatures as low as any in the winter.

Meanwhile in 2005 and 2006, the month started with northerly and easterly winds, and they continued until 13 March in 2005 and until 23 March in 2006. Ten inches of snow fell on parts of Kent on 2 March 2005, and on 4 March snow settled in north London. In 2006, there was no snow in the south east, though plenty further north. The cold winds up to 23 March that year were so fierce that spring was completely put on hold, with none of the usual blossoms and flowers coming out.

As for equinoctal storms. 2008 saw lows of this kind from 6 to 15 March, with particularly strong winds around 10-11 March. It was a particularly dismal month, in fact, with only five or six really good sunny days, most of them at the start of the month. After its cold first three weeks, 2006 also ended with westerly winds and heavy rain – though in this case the precipitation was welcome after a dry winter.

Even at the start of the month it is light till after 6pm, meaning day length has more or less ceased to be an issue. The clocks going forward on the last weekend of the month still rather take one by surprise, however: can it really now be light until almost 8pm? But yes, it can, and this is the start of five and a half wonderful months when this will be true.

It is starts to be dry enough to sit on the ground, due to the increased temperature of the sun, which makes evapouration faster. In January, even if the weather is dry the ground stays wet. By the end of March, if the weather is dry for a few days one can sit on the grass in the park, though heavy rain still has the power to turn paths muddy and the turf soggy. (In 2008, the exact opposite happened, however: the ground started the month dry after a very sunny February, but after stormy weather and then a cold snap, ended the month with mud of a midwinter intensity.)

Hayfever sufferers get reminded of their ailment, if they were not already reminded of it in February. Tree pollen – and in particular birch pollen which can start at the end of the month – is the cause of the suffering.

NATURE NOTES

• Daffodils, primroses and celandines
• Lambs in the fields
• Another great month to observe birds and identify their song

Flower and tree names in blue are links to photos. You can also see some photos displayed on this page: put your cursor over any photo to see its caption, or click to see it larger. This will also give you access to the full set of March photos on Flickr. Wikipedia also has photos and more information on many flowers and trees.

March starts with only tentative signs of spring, but gathers pace as it goes along. By the end of the month, plenty of early flowers are out, cheering up parks, path verges, and some woodland floors. Fields and trees still generally look drab and tired, however.

Daffodils, primroses and celandines

Snowdrops and crocuses fade in the first half of March, but one doesn’t notice because there are plenty of other distractions. In particular, March is daffodil month: the few that came out in February are gradually joined by others, with numbers reaching their maximum around the third week, before fading in early April.

The same goes for celandines (properly lesser celandines) which appear on river banks, along the verges of roads and paths, and on woodland floors. Once again, one gets a few in the first week of the month, and then they gradually gather force, peaking at the end of March. You have to be out in the middle of the day to see celandines at their best, however: they are sensitive to cold, and in the early morning or late in the afternoon are tightly closed yellow buds.

Another yellow favourite is the primrose, which crops up on wayside verges right from the start of the month, and can cover some road or path verges by its end.

Other flowers

Some daisies and dandelions appear in the grass – again only a few early in the month, but becoming much more widespread towards its end. Violets continue on verges and are at their best mid month, fading towards the end.

In the woods, the star flower in March is the wood anemone – white or blushed with pink, star-shaped when open by day, demure hanging bells in the early morning or late afternoon. They start mid month and are at their best at the months’ end, forming intense carpets in some woods. Another plant that carpets woodland floors is dog mercury, which has inconspicuours flowers but which brings a welcome flush of green when full grown at the end of the month.

Other woodland flowers are still to come – the spiky leaves of bluebells are in evidence all month, but the flowers are still some weeks away. The same goes for wild garlic (ransoms) whose waxy leaves appear in late February, and which are fully grown (and smelling very garlicky) by the end of March.

Several verge and field edge weeds that may have first appeared in February continue – for example chickweed, which appears inconspicuously in grassland, and you may also spot some speedwell. More noticeable are red deadnettles which can form quite attractive patches on broken ground as the month goes on. They are joined in March by white deadnettles.

Other verge plants include goosegrass, the triangular waxy green leaves of cuckoo pint, and also the fern-like vegetation of cow parsley, which by the end of the month can give path edges in woodland a vibrant green look. Less welcome, stinging nettles continue to grow, though are not yet more than a few inches high. Later in the month they may be joined by the leaves of spurge or herb robert. If you know what you are looking for, you can also see the leaves of hogweed and giant hogweed in fields and woods later in the month, while by the sea, alexanders – a sort of yellow-green cow parsley – springs up around the same time.

Towards the end of the month if the weather is warm, you can get some early April flowers – in particular cuckoo flowers on roadside verges, and also wild strawberries. In marshy areas yellow marsh marigolds can be seen.

Gardens bloom

Several flowers that are mainly found in gardens but are in fact wild flowers can be seen in March – for example, rosemary, with its blue flowers, and purple periwinkles. You can see clumps of three-cornered leeks, which look a bit like white bluebells, and lungwort, a spotty-leaved relative of comfrey.

Some exotic garden shrubs also provide a welcome splash of colour. Mimosa comes into glorious yellow flower, and so does forsythia – a bush that is suddenly awash with yellow flowers from mid month (from the start of the month in 2008). One garden shrub you can also find in the wild sometimes is flowering currant, with its pendulous pink flowers.

As early as the second week you can also see blue forget-me-nots and the bobble-headed grape hyacinth in gardens, as well as an outbreak of bedding plant flowers such as aubretia.

Bees and butterflies

With the flowers, bumble bees return (though some will already have appeared in February), as do ladybirds and various tiny insects, but none are not yet particularly noticeable. Hibernating butterflies, such as the peacock, red admiral, small tortoiseshell or yellow brimstone – can also also be seen on sunny days in the second half of March. Snails reappear and start to chew your plants.

Lambs in the fields

Grass on lawns and in parks is cut for the first time sometime in the second half of March, and towards the very end of the month, pastureland in the countryside is just starting to lose its tired winter look due to new shoots of grass. It is no coincidence that this is also when lambs start to appear in the fields – they are bred to make the most of the spring field growth (and sadly, most are meat before the summer is out). And incidentally, if you see an arable field of what looks like young cabbage at this time, this is oilseed rape, which produces a glorious sea of yellow flowers in April.

The first leaves

The big transformation of hedgerows and trees from brown to green takes place in April, but there are some early signs in March. Blossom on park cherry trees and their wild cherry plum equivalents fades mid month (except in 2005, 2006 an 2009 when cold February weather meant they did not start till mid March, or fade till early April). The blooms are replaced by leaves, making the wild cherry plum one of the first shrubs in the countryside to put out new greenery.

Other leafing plants in hedgerows includes privet, which retains some of its foliage in winter (there is a wild version, with longer, thinner leaves than the garden variety), and – surprisingly – honeysuckle, which puts out leaves as early as January. Elder, which also puts out tentative leaves as early as January, starts to grow them in earnest as the month goes on, and the same is true of budleia, which grows on wasteground.

Other shrubs that seem to be testing the air include wild roses, and brambles. Both put out tiny new leaves in the second half of month, though they remain tentative by the month’s end. The same can also be true of dogwood, identifiable by its red stems. Some hawthorn bushes also start to leaf from mid month, though it tends to be the smaller or younger examples which go first..

The first tree to come into leaf is – surprisingly – weeping willow, which can start to put out green shoots and catkins as early as the first week of March, and which shines yellowish-green in the landscape by the second or third week. Towards the end of the month, it is joined by horse chestnut, whose huge buds open to disgorge wierdly shaped tongues of vegetation that eventually morph into leaflets that hang limp and green. It is rare for this process to be much advanced by the end of March, however.

By this time (the last week to ten days of the month) hazel and hornbeam (which are in fact closely related, though quite different when fully in leaf) also put put out small leaves, though they grow very slowly. Leaves first appear on female hornbeams (they seem to change sex from year to year), while male trees produce catkins. Remaining hazel catkins fall at the start of the month, with alder catkins following a week or so later. Mid month, you can see red catkins on poplars, including the black and lombardy poplars, and fuzzy red flowers on red maples (an imported species mainly seen in streets and parks)

March is also the month for pussy willow catkins (in fact, the catkins of the goat willow or sallow), which appear by mid month (a bit earlier in 2007 and 2008). However, white willows don’t put out leaves and catkins until the very end of the month at the earliest.

By the end of March, almost every tree has pronounced buds and seems about to leaf, and when the month has a warm ending, you can see other tree activity beginning – birch starting to put out catkins, some sycamores and apple trees coming into leaf, and some wild cherries (not to be confused with the cherry plum mentioned above) beginning to blossom and produce leaves at the same time.

On heathland and scrubland, gorse, which put out some flowers as early as January, now makes quite a concentrated display of its yellow blooms. Early in the month you can see little flowers on yew and other evergreens, while larch - the only conifer to lose its leaves in winter – puts out soft tassles of new leaves and tiny new cones in the second half of the month.

A great month to spot birds

For pictures, more information and sound clips of the birds mentioned here, see the RSPB website.

March is a good month to identify common countryside birds and their songs. Most are now singing their mating calls, and the lack of foliage makes it realitvely easy to see them.

You can still hear lots of robins during the month, as well as great tits, though the see-saw song of the latter is perhaps marginally less unbiquitous than in February. You can also hear the repeated note of the blue tit’s mating call. Chaffinches continue their cascading song, the cheerful chatter of greenfinches are much in evidence, as well as its “squeegzh” of a call. Goldfinches can also be heard, but seem less in evidence than earlier in the year. Listen out too for the laughing call of the green woodpecker can be heard in the woods, and the tapping of the greater spotted woodpecker.

Perhaps the most evocative of all birdsong is the measured and melodious phrases of the blackbird, which is now in the full stride – particularly towards dusk, but also at times in the middle of the day. You can also hear song thrushes – identifiable because they repeat a whole range of different phrases – and the mistle thrush, which makes a kind of clipped blackbird song. Not often noticed but very widely heard are dunnocks, whose song is like a squeaky supermarket trolley wheel. The similar-looking sparrows continue to cheep away near houses, and you might hear a sudden trilling outburst from a wren. Larks can be heard twittering above fields and downs – a summer sound that rather seems out of place.

The most exciting birdsong in March, however, is perhaps the chiffchaff, whose ponderous three note song can be heard at the end of the month. These are our first summer visiting birds, who have flown all the way from Africa to feast on the bounty of our spring, and are a real sign that spring is here.

Two unusual years

Two years when the above sequence was disrupted were 2006 and 2007. In 2006, the cold meant almost no flowering took place till the last week of the month: daffodils remained tentative, celandines did not appear at all, and nor did daisies, dandelions or any other flowers. Primroses were few and far between, and mainly in gardens. The greening of the woodland verges with goosegrass and cow parsley did not happen.

The cherry blossom, which came out in mid February in 2005 and then was in suspended animation for the four cold weeks that followed, also did not bloom till the last week of March 2006. When the weather warmed up on 24 March, all of the above started to grow like mad, however.

In complete contrast, the very mild start to March 2007, which followed a very mild January and February, had everything coming out early. Many hawthorn bushes started to leaf mid month, as did some horse chestnuts. Blackthorn also blossomed in places. But all of these activities, normally associated with April, were brought to a sudden halt by the cold snap from the 18th onwards, and did not resume generally until the end of the month.

© Peter Conway 2006 - updated 2007, 2008, 2009 • All Rights Reserved • From his South East of England Almanac