Dear Readers, everything is budding and singing and greening up in Coldfall Wood, just round the corner from where I live in East Finchley. It’s true that it’s damp and muddy underfoot, but there is still the sound of bird song, including the flutey warblings of this male blackbird. I’m trying to remember which poet described it as having a ‘crocus-yellow bill’, but it’s exactly right.

And there was an unexpectedly friendly jay poking about too. Normally you get a quick flash of pink and blue and then they’re off – if you’re lucky, you get to see how rounded their wings are. They almost seem to float. That  electric-blue stripe on the wing psychedelic – so few animals are truly blue (and in fact these feathers reflect blue light rather than being blue themselves). Alas, the blue feathers have been cause enough for people to shoot them, as Mark Avery suggests in his article here. Technically, a jay can only be shot after non-lethal methods of control have been tried, but as people seem to be able to shoot golden eagles without being found and prosecuted, I imagine that the odd dead jay would be as nothing. Still, in urban ancient woods the jays seem to be thriving.

Jay

And then there are the wild cherries (Prunus avium), just coming into bloom. They look positively ethereal. I love how the one below is doing well in one of the coppiced areas, which is giving it a bit more light.

Overall, though, a lot of the wood has no understorey at all, as I’ve mentioned at least three times this week (sorry everyone! It just makes me sad).

Coldfall Wood

Still, generally most dead wood is allowed to rot in place (except where people are using it for dens) which leads to a fine selection of fungi, especially in autumn.

Standing dead wood near the stream

Someone was mentioning how ‘yellow’ the spring flowers are, what with all the dandelions and lesser celandine and marsh marigolds. I’m not sure this is 100% true, but it might be because yellow flowers are very visible to flies, who don’t have colour vision but who can tell light from dark. Flies are generally out and about earlier than most bees, and as I’ve mentioned before are important but underrated pollinators, especially of early flowers.

Marsh Marigolds by the wet woodland

And the corrugated leaves of the hornbeam are just emerging. Coldfall is a hornbeam and oak wood –  the hornbeam would have been cut back pretty much to the ground every year, with the twigs being used for kindling or charcoal. The oaks would have been left for up to a century and then harvested. It always moves me to think of people  planting these trees that they would never see fully grown, but then that’s what legacy is about – paying things forward for a future that we won’t see. And every spring brings a feeling of hope, of possibility. A walk in the woods always cheers me up.

Hornbeam leaves emerging