Spring comes to Hinchingbrooke Country Park.

The causeway in Hinchingbrooke Country Park.

In Brampton this week there are signs of spring everywhere: laundry hung outside in the morning, queues at Frosts Garden Centre all day and the burning-fat smell of barbecues in the evening.

This is Spring's second attempt here. I put the washing line up in February when we had a few days of Mediterranean weather.  Blossom burst out along the verges, blackbirds and thrushes sang in the dawn of each lengthening day and frogs returned to garden ponds. We even had some early frogspawn. Then March "came in like a lion" with a succession of gales and we had a brief "blackthorn winter" that destroyed a lot of the early blossom.

Frogspawn and toadspawn together.

Yesterday the sun shone on us all day and I had time for a walk, but where to go? In the hope of finding some spring migrants I decided on Hinchingbrooke Country Park.

The omens were good as I crossed the road near Samuel Pepys' cottage where a red kite and a buzzard flew low overhead, just as they would have in his day too. Entering the meadow through the roadside kissing gate I spooked half a dozen rabbits, a green woodpecker and a crow but a scan of the close-cropped turf and the tops of fence-posts produced no wagtails or passing wheatears. They will come in the next week I'm sure. Badgers had worked the field during the night, turning over dried cowpats to root for worms beneath.

Great-crested grebe

The narrow causeway between the lakes is often under water at this time of year but a dry winter has permitted a lot of work to be done on it recently so the path is in good shape and the freshly coppiced willows are doing their job of holding off wave erosion. Great crested grebes were calling on both lakes but I missed seeing their extraordinary courtship dance, probably I was too late in the day.

Lesser celandine.

Yellow king-cups are also known as marsh marigolds. They only grow where it is relatively wet while the smaller and more common lesser celandines grow among the violets in the shade beneath trees and hedges. Curiously, most of the violets in the park are white rather than purple.

The reeds and rushes around the lakes are still straw-coloured but fresh green shoots will appear through the mats of dead stems any day now. I listened for the trip-trap jingle of a reed bunting or the chatter of the first sedge warbler but, as so often happens, I'm anticipating the season by a week or so. The only chatter I heard from the reeds was a wren, which is possibly the most common bird in the park this year; hard to see but easy to hear.

Black-headed gulls.

There is one spring migrant that is almost always the first to arrive. Some chiffchaffs actually stay with us for the winter but most go south to Iberia. I heard their onomatopoeic song from the tops of the trees as I fringed the woods. Chiffchaffs like to sing from tall trees but they will nest in the nettles on the ground beneath. The other two-note songster that dominates the woods in March is the great tit. They have a much more varied repertoire than the chiffchaff's but usually sound like a bicycle pump "tee-taw".

Toad

There is a small bird-watching hide that overlooks a pond that is popular with waterfowl. A small raft has been anchored off-shore for terns to nest on. At the moment it is occupied by a pair of black-headed gulls. When the terns come back from Ghana they might well see the gulls off, or they might share the platform with them. We shall see.

Frog (with toad in foreground)

A second shallow pond provides perfect habitat for frogs and toads. The shore was littered with scattered and torn-up remains of them and, at first, I thought this might be the work of some very unpleasant people. The animals had been pulled to pieces, but they had also been chewed about, so I think herons, crows and perhaps a fox or even an otter were involved in this bonanza of easy prey in the shallows. Even after all that predation I expected to see no frogs at all but among the reeds there were globs of fresh frogspawn entangled with long strings of toad-spawn and dozens of adult amphibians, both smooth frogs and warty golden-eyed toads.

Rookery

The tallest trees in the park host a thriving rookery. Before the leaves come the nests are easy to count and observe and the noisy rooks are hard to miss. A rookery is an exciting place to be, with all kinds of social interaction taking place. The birds are in pairs but they are probably related to all their neighbours and they seem to be very social birds, although they do indulge in antisocial behaviour too, such as stealing each other's sticks. Sometimes a domestic squabble will spread to the whole colony.

Rooks

The densest part of the wood is criss-crossed by the trails of muntjac deer and badgers. I have read that some of our oldest and most winding country lanes followed badger trails through the thickets and briars and slowly became wider through heavy use.  Where the sunlight hit the path I found peacock butterflies and other insects sunning. One of my favourite springtime insects is the bee-fly, which is furry like a lot of early emergers for obvious reasons. It hovers over the holes of miner bees and fires its eggs down the chute so that its offspring can live off the eggs and larvae of the bees. The long snout is for sucking nectar from tubular flowers like primroses and cowslips. They don't sting or bite.

Muntjac "slots".

Bee-fly sunning itself.

In the dense shade the liver-spotted leaves of wild arum are unfolding. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this plant is the long list of folk-names it has, including lords and ladies, cuckoo pint and Jack-in-the-pulpit.

Wild arum leaves.

Off the path the ground is littered with fallen logs and branches that are deliberately left to be recycled by nature into more trees. Fungi, beetles, woodlice, worms and millipedes help in the process of decomposition. The galleries made beneath the bark by elm beetle larvae are particularly attractive, like the fossils of ancient creatures that once lived on the sea bed.

Elm beetle galleries.

I have a favourite spot where I look for grass-snakes, which are very commonly seen swimming in the lakes in summer. When they first emerge in spring they need to warm up and also to mate. I found a tangle of six of them on the sunny side of a pile of brashings.  That was my best find of the morning. Sadly the photos were disappointing.

A tangle of 6 grass snakes.

I strolled back towards home down the Chestnut Avenue accompanied by yellow brimstone butterflies. These are the original "butter-flies." They are quite hard to capture for a photo because they seldom seem to settle for long.

Chestnut Avenue.

If I can find all of these things and more in just two hours in March, just think of all the wonders to come in April or May. We are so lucky to have a place like Hinchingbrooke Country Park on our doorsteps. It's a place to cherish and enjoy.