March is the start of something special. The first month of spring sees major changes in our birdlife. Some wintering birds (think Bewick’s Swans etc) will be gone by the month’s end. Others will be flooding in and new singers will be filling the airwaves. Here are five lovely birds to see (and hear) this month.
Siskin
This gorgeous little finch has increased its range significantly southwards since many of us started birding. While formerly a bird associated with the northern part of the UK , nowadays, they are regular birds even in southern England. For most of us in the south, though, they are most familiar as wintering birds, often forming sizable flocks, as they feed acrobatically on Birch or Alder catkins. Before moving back to the breeding grounds, male Siskins can often be heard singing, often in chorus, with a distinctive pleasing twittering song, interspersed by elongated ‘wheezy’ notes.
Crane
The Crane is a modern success story. Having become extinct as a UK breeder in the 16th Century, tiny numbers started breeding in eastern Norfolk in the 1980s. Now, more than 80 pairs are known to nest, with the number of pairs increasing each year, with a wintering population now exceeding 250 birds. On the ‘washes’ of northern and north-eastern Cambridgeshire, for instance, it is no longer unusual to see winter flocks of 50 or more birds. As spring progresses, these shy, elegant, wetland giants start to get frisky and go in search of sites for their large, ground-based nests. One of the great sights and sounds of spring is the courtship dance and bugling duet of a pair of Cranes.
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
The tiny, sparrow Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, is a bird on a worryingly dangerous decline in the UK, becoming lost as a breeding bird in many parts of the country. Between 1997 and 2022, the population dropped by 81% and there are possibly fewer than 500 pairs left in the country. That said, surveying these small, unobtrusive birds is notoriously difficult, particularly as they favour small branches near treetops to feed; looking for them is easiest before the leaves have fully grown. March is the last chance to catch up with them before they are masked in leaves, and is also one of the peak time to hear the Kestrel-like ‘kekekekeke’ call and the extended, rattling drumming (done by both sexes).
Little Ringed Plover
Little Ringed Plovers like gravelly inland sites (eg the edge of gravel pits) for their nesting areas. From mid-March, they will be returning to favoured sites, with about 1,250 pairs, mainly in the southern half of the UK. They are smaller, slimmer and longer winged than Ringed Plovers, with a bright yellow eye-ring and lacking the bright orange colours in the bill and legs of the larger bird. LRPs also lack the obvious white wing-bars of their dumpy cousins, and have a distinctive downslurred call. Males are slightly brighter and more contrastingly patterned than females.
Golden Plover
Though most of us know Golden Plovers as wintering birds (with more than 400,000 spread across the UK), some 33,000 nest here, mainly in moorlands and similar upland sites the north and north-west. In March, adult birds will often be showing the distinctive black colour on the underparts of breeders, before they head to the nesting sites. Sometimes, at this time, you may encounter flocks where most of the birds have dense black plumage on the face, throat, breast and belly; birds from the northern European breeding population.