Channel 4 News filmmaker and journalist Rachel Seifert on the arrival of spring in the countryside
Rachel Seifert is a documentary filmmaker and journalist who makes environmental films for Channel 4 News. She and her young family moved out of London in Covid lockdown and are now very happily settled in the countryside near Bishop’s Stortford. She is also an avid birdwatcher and nature lover...
I think we can all agree that spring has finally sprung. The recent sunny, warm and dry spell has really felt like we have fully shaken off our winter coats and moulted into the new season. According to the latest Met Office data, this March was the sunniest since records began back in 1910. And April seems to be following that closely behind.
In our house it was officially declared spring by the kids back on the first day of March. Shorts were taken out of the cupboard, T-shirts pulled off the shelves, coats thrown off to the side. Although, inevitably, that then began a lively debate around the perfectly valid question of ‘if it is officially spring, then why on earth doesn’t it feel like it?!’
They were adamant, not wrongly, that on that day when the calendar month officially moves from winter to spring we were now in the new season. But then it also didn’t feel like it was spring as we were still hanging onto the freezing frosty mornings and cold crisp air at the start of the month. The ground was frozen in the mornings and the fieldfares were still very much out in large flocks, reminding us we hadn’t quite left the winter chill behind. The usual morning cry of ‘are we there yet?’ had become ‘is it actually spring yet?!’ To which they were looking to me for a definite answer.
The signs of spring were definitely there back in early March - the few glimpses of sunshine and the odd warmth on the face had begun to crack winter’s hard coat, catkins proudly coming out swinging their tails in anticipation, green shoots starting to push through the frozen soil and the first scattering of buds starting to appear.
Despite it feeling like a long winter, the Spring Index by the Woodland Trust suggests that seasonal events are happening earlier in the year. In fact, they have calculated that, on average, spring has advanced to nearly nine days earlier since 1998 compared to the first part of the 20th century. This advancement is being strongly linked to the warmer temperatures in March and April. And this year has been no different.
The question was a simple one - when is it actually spring? Yet one that turned out to be not that easy to answer. Spring as a season is the one which holds the most anticipation, the most excitement, the one we place most hope and invest the most emotion into. It also feels the most personal season, bringing back childhood memories, each person having a definition of spring different to the next. Spring is reminiscent of a particular time and a place, though evolving through the years.
My perception of spring has changed dramatically since moving to more rural surroundings. Now I feel that the seasons are far more defined by the changes in the natural world than the calendar months. The seasons feel far more noticeable, far more impactful on our daily lives, far more involved in the countryside. And spring is no exception.
For me, it is the flowers which are the first signs of spring, the first signals that things are changing, the first smiles of hope. Yellow has got to be the colour palette of early spring - from the lemon of the primroses to the deep gold of the crocus - both the early harbingers of the season. Then come the various shades of daffodils trumpeting their awakening and heralding what is to come. And now we have the cowslip yellows spreading over the fields, with their little fairy cups standing proudly, and the flutter of the brimstone’s buttery wings.
But it is the bright sunshine celandine which really marks the season of spring for me. Those glossy, shimmery, bright little golden suns shining through the hedgerows and along the edges and verges. Now out in full force, they cannot help but put a smile on your face.
Then of course the spring equinox hits towards the end of March and this year it just so happened to be the most glorious day. Marking the official start of the season when the light and dark of the day mirror each other and from here on in the days will be getting longer and lighter. It was all lining up in anticipation that spring officially was now here and the kids were fully signed up to this idea. With the warm, sunny dry spell we’ve had, it felt hard to deny that the season was well and truly under way. In fact, our household went from not being certain about whether spring had arrived to feeling like summer had already dawned upon us!
A local walk around the fields that day in the dazzling sun and it really felt as if the world had woken up. As if the entire landscape had been brushed over with a wash of paint overnight, bringing colour and life to scene.
But the real noticeable difference was that now the birds were out in force alongside the flowers and the countryside came alive with a cacophony of sounds. The skylarks singing full throttle, trilling high pitched in their ethereal celebrations of the warmth, the yellowhammers darting through the hedgerows as bright as the sun herself with their melodic little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese and the long-tailed tits chittering and chattering away amongst themselves. Further along a hedgerow, the overwhelming buzzing hum of hundreds of bees busying themselves around the sticky, nectar-rich goat willow catkins. The soundtrack of the season.
Spring was literally being soaked up in every pore, but, despite this, there was one thing still missing to really make it feel like the season was well and truly here. One thing I was waiting on to officially declare spring was here. Something which I then heard a few days later - the first song of the chiffchaff. A bird so tiny and unassuming to the naked eye, yet with such a distinctive song calling out its name as if to say ‘I’m here, I’m back and now let us and spring truly begin’ - and indeed it has.
