James Harcourt
The woodland wakes before the calendar does
By mid-February, most British broadleaved woods still look emphatically bare. The canopy is a scribble of grey twigs, the ground is leaf-litter and mud, and there is a strong temptation to stay indoors until the clocks change. But something has already shifted. On the first still, mild morning after a run of hard frosts, the wood sounds different — busier, more purposeful. The first signs of spring are rarely dramatic. They arrive quietly, and they reward anyone willing to visit the same patch of woodland regularly through late February, March and April.
The trick is not to cover ground. A single two-mile circuit, walked slowly and repeated weekly, will teach you far more than a new location every weekend. Spring is a process, not an event, and the pleasure lies in catching each stage as it unfolds.
Listen first: drumming woodpeckers and early song
With no leaves to absorb it, sound travels beautifully through a leafless wood. This is the best month or two of the year for listening, so stop often and simply stand still.
The headline sound is the drumming of the great spotted woodpecker. It is not feeding — that is a slower, irregular tapping. Drumming is territorial, delivered from a favoured dead limb high in a tree, and it sounds like a stick being rattled briskly along metal railings: a short, fast, mechanical burst lasting under a second, with a slight acceleration and a hard stop. It begins properly in late January, builds through February and peaks in March and April.
If you are lucky enough to hear the lesser spotted woodpecker, the drum is noticeably longer and softer — often one and a half to two seconds — and more even, without the great spotted's abrupt finish. It is a scarce and declining bird of old, open woodland, so note the time and place carefully if you hear one.
Other voices are joining in. The great tit has been piping its two-note "teacher-teacher" since January. The song thrush repeats each phrase two or three times, as though practising. The mistle thrush sings from an exposed treetop, sometimes in weather that would silence anything else. The nuthatch rings out its clear whistles, and by March the green woodpecker's laughing yaffle is back. The dawn chorus itself peaks about half an hour before sunrise, so set the alarm.
Reading the trees: catkins, buds and blossom
Once your ears are tuned, look up. The hazel catkins — the "lambs' tails" — have been lengthening since January and turn yellow with pollen on mild days. Look closely below them for the tiny crimson female flowers, no bigger than a pinhead, on the same twigs. Alder catkins are similar but purple-brown and carried on long stalks.
In the hedgerow edge, blackthorn flowers on bare black twigs from March, sometimes earlier, well before its leaves appear: dense clusters of starry white blossom that stand out against a grey wood. Hawthorn follows later, usually with its leaves. Goat willow produces the familiar silvery "pussy willow" catkins, which turn gold with pollen.
Watch the order in which trees come into leaf, too. Elder and hawthorn tend to flush first, then birch, then ash and oak. The old country saying — "oak before ash, in for a splash; ash before oak, in for a soak" — is worth testing against your own records, though it is a piece of folklore rather than a forecast.
The ground layer: first green shoots
Look down as well as up, because the ground flora is often a fortnight ahead of the canopy. Bluebell leaves push up as strappy green shoots from February, long before the flower spikes appear in April and May. Dog's mercury can carpet a wood floor in green by early March. Wood anemone opens starry white flowers from March, often in the same places year after year. Lesser celandine glows with glossy heart-shaped leaves and yellow stars in any patch of sunlight. By late March, ramsons — wild garlic — sends up broad, bright green leaves that announce themselves with an unmistakable smell when bruised.
Several of these plants are ancient woodland indicators, meaning they spread so slowly that their presence suggests a wood has been continuously wooded for centuries. Recording them is a genuinely useful contribution to your own understanding of a site.
What to record in your nature journal
Begin every entry with context, because a record without it means little later: date, time, weather, approximate temperature, wind direction and cloud cover.
- Firsts of the year. First drumming heard, first catkin shedding pollen, first bluebell shoot, first butterfly — brimstone, comma or peacock are the usual early candidates.
- Species lists. Birds seen and heard, noting which were heard only. Sound records matter as much as sightings in a leafless wood.
- Quick sketches. A bud, a catkin, a leaf silhouette. Jot the scale beside it. A rough drawing forces you to look properly.
- Sound notes in your own words. "Drumming: roughly one second, a dozen strikes, accelerating" is worth far more than a vague memory by June.
- Year-on-year comparison. Keep dates for the same wood and note whether things are early or late.
Write short notes in the field, then expand them at home while the detail is fresh.
Practical kit and quiet technique
Go early, ideally in the first two hours after sunrise. Choose still, damp mornings over bright, breezy ones — damp air carries sound, and wind masks almost everything. A broadleaved wood with some mature trees and standing dead wood will always be more productive than a tidy plantation.
- Warm layers, a waterproof, a hat, and thin gloves that let you hold a pencil. A flask is not optional.
- Binoculars of 8x32 or 8x42 — light-gathering matters more than magnification in a shaded wood.
- A notebook and pencil rather than a pen, which freezes and smudges in rain, plus a phone for voice memos.
- Keep to paths, keep well back from nest holes and drumming trees, and keep dogs close and quiet.
- Skip playback recordings entirely. Standing still for five minutes at a time will bring you far more.
None of this requires a long journey or expensive equipment. It requires repetition. Return to the same wood each week through March, and you will watch winter loosen its grip tree by tree, note by note.
