May 2017 — the Willow Warbler and the wood anemone

One of the most beautiful bird-sounds to accompany the arrival of spring is the sound of the Willow Warbler. This clear descending warble signals the end of a long journey from the African continent and nesting can now begin. The tiny birds seem to favour the Medlock Valley and the other day I was watching one feeding on a Sycamore tree. This particular scrubby tree, growing under hard conditions, has not go much going for it in visual terms except that at this time of year the Sycamore flowers emerge from a protective calyx which is of a bright reddish-pink. So there was a fine composite image: the bird, very delicate in shades of olive, white and yellow, pecking at a red-pink calyx and them hopping on to the next one. I wonder what it was feeding on exactly, what kind of minute insects had now become sustenance for one of our sweetest songbirds.

Wood anemone

     Before spring really started to roll, I was admiring some Coltsfoot flowers on spare ground at Mumps. They appear before the leaves on almost bare stems and are an inch in diameter, each resembling a bright yellow chimney-sweep’s brush. An exhaustive and well-illustrated British Flora from 1897 incudes much background history of the featured plants and mentions a cough treatment from ancient Rome. This sounds counter-intuitive, but improves as it goes along: ‘the dried leaves of coltsfoot to be burnt and the smoke drawn in to the mouth through a reed and swallowed as a remedy for an obstinate cough, the patient sipping a little wine between each inhalation.’

     The Wood Anemone is a native plant of delicate beauty. Crystalline white flowers flanked by handsome foliage shine from damp woodlands floors. The plant has been adopted into gardens for centuries and remarkable has produced a handful of varieties perhaps even more attractive than the original. We have one in which the petals (it flowers in March/April) are tinted a shade of lavender blue. This was being smothered in the front garden, so I am currently growing it in a pot. This has allowed the rather exquisite form of the plant to be fully appreciated, the graceful breeze-driven movements demonstrating why anemones are sometimes called ‘windflowers’.