Picture; brimstone butterfly on a dandelion. Click here for more March butterfly and insect photos. For more information on butterflies see the Butterfly Conservation website.
Insects slowly reappear in March, but this depends on how warm the weather is. Not surprisingly there are relatively few in the first half of the month, but towards the end there can be a noticeable uptick. If it is cold and wet there are hardly any.
Most obvious are bumble bees, which make a loud buzzing noise as they fly by, as if they are impatient for mere humans to get out of their way. The ones you see at this time of year are enormous queens that have emerged from hibernation (species include buff-tailed, white-tailed and garden bumble bees, all of which look rather similar, and the red-tailed bumble bee, which is a bit more distinct).
It is only the new queens of these species that overwinter in this way, having mated the previous autumn: the workers, males and last year's queens all die at the end of the summer. They have thick fur which enables them to fly when other insects are still dormant, and their first task is to look for a hole (for example an abandoned mouse hole) in which to create their new colony. For this reason they are usually flying close to the ground.
When they have found a suitable site, they must then amass a lump of pollen larger than themselves to provide food for their first offspring. Once the colony is established - usually sometime in May - there are workers to do the food gathering and the queen then spends the rest of her life underground, producing larvae.
Honeybees appear when the weather is fine. They are the only social bee species in which the whole colony overwinters (feeding on the honey they have stored up). If there is a good nectar or pollen source - for example crocuses, cherry plum blossom or pussy willow catkins - you can hear a very summery hum.
As the month goes on you can also see the common carder bee, another type of bumble bee, identifiable by its tawny thorax. Once again, it is queens that have overwintered that are on the wing at this time of year, though the size difference is not so obvious as it is with the other bumble bees. They are particularly fond of feeding on white and red deadnettle.
There are also a wide range of solitary bees, that do not live in colonies and who mate and lay eggs in individual nest holes. One that is particularly noticeable at this time of year is the hairy-footed flower bee. It has the somewhat plump look of a bumble bee, though is much smaller than the queens mentioned above. The female is entirely black - the only bumble bee that is. The males have a tawny thorax and the rather feathery legs that give the species its name. Both sexes have a zigzag flight and like to feed on lungwort and grape hyacinth.
Another common category of solitary bee are the mining bees (early, tawny, yellow-legged....) which look a lot like miniature honeybees, but feed singly rather than socially, and do not make a buzzing or humming noise in flight. Males, in particular, are very tiny and can be mistaken for flies: you often see them feeding on dandelions.
Hoverflies also appear as the month goes on, in various sizes from the tiny upwards. They are the principal pollinators of wood anemones. Many hoverflies have evolved to look like bees to discourage predators: however, no bee hovers, which is one way of telling them apart. Along with male mining bees, as mentioned above, smaller hoverflies account for many of the tiny insects you see feeding on dandelions at this time of year.
One other hovering insect which also appears in the second half of March is the charming bee fly, which has a furry, chubby body, and feeds from flowers such as grape hyacinth and primrose much like a hummingbird, using its long proboscis. It has a not so charming breeding habit, however, being a cuckoo bee that flicks its eggs (weighted with sand) into other bee and wasp nests: its larvae then eat the young of the host species.
Towards the end of the month queen wasps also emerge from their winter dormancy and look around for nest sites, and in general you start to see all sorts of flies and tiny flying insects if the weather is fine. As is the case all winter, you can still get little swarms of gnats dancing in the light of a sunset.
Look out too for seven-spot ladybirds basking in the sun - they metamorphosed from larvae to adults at the end of last summer and have lain dormant all winter: now their task is to breed. On warmer days later in the month you may just see dock or shield bugs on a similar mission.
Spiders become slightly more active as the weather warms, but they are very unobtrusive: you may see a tiny one scuttling across a footpath. Ants, who seal up their nests in winter, can also be seen scurrying about.
Butterflies
Several butterfly species also overwinter as adults. This is not hibernation - only mammals do this, slowing their metabolism to a very low rate. Instead butterflies "diapause": they shut off their metabolism entirely and become inert, except that they are able to switch back on in an instant if disturbed. If the temperature rises above 15 degrees or so - something that seems impossible early in the month, but usually does occur at some point in the second half - they come back to life and start to look for mates.
Typically the yellow brimstone (the original "butter fly", but brilliantly disguised as a pale green leaf when at rest with its wings closed) is the first you see, flying purposefully across the landscape. But also look out for the peacock - you may disturb them from country paths, where they lie basking in the sun - or the comma, with its jagged wing edges.
Until just a few years ago the small tortoiseshell would have been added to this list: now this once common butterfly seems to be very rare in the south east. Notice how the bright orange and red colours of these last three butterflies provide perfect camouflage against the fallen leaves and still brown hedgerows in March.
You may also come across a red admiral, a migrant which really should not be here at this time of year but which sometimes does manage to survive our winters. There is no evidence yet that they go on to breed: instead the first wave of red admirals to these shores consists of already mated females who arrive in May.
At the very end of the month it is also just possible that you might see a speckled wood (some of which overwinter as pupae and some as caterpillars) or a holly blue, small or green-veined white, or orange tip, all of which overwinter as pupae. But all of these more normally appear in April. The orange tip feeds on cuckoo flowers and garlic mustard, and so appears when those flowers do.
Frogs and lambs
If walking past a pond early in the month you may see frogs mating, the smaller male hanging on grimly to the female's back. More likely you will see their jelly-like frogspawn. Frogs tend to lay in shallow ponds where there are no fish to eat the tadpoles, so you can see frogspawn even in ponds in parks and - occasionally and unwisely - in large puddles
Towards the end of the month pastureland in the countryside is just starting to lose its tired winter look due to new shoots of grass. It is no coincidence that this is also when lambs start to appear in the fields – they are bred to make the most of the spring field growth and sadly most are lamb chops by the autumn.
There has been a tendency in recent years, however, to have ewes give birth later in the spring (so as to reduce lamb mortality due to cold snaps?), so you can still see heavily pregnant ones in the field well into April. Mature sheep that don't look pregnant, one suspects, are having their last feed before a one way trip to the abattoir.
More March pages:
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