Dunnocks & celandine: Spring is stirring at Hothfield Heathlands

The heart-shaped glossy leaves are rich in vitamin C so were used against scurvy. The entire plant withers above ground as stronger plants and tree cover cut out the essential sunlight, food stored in the bulbils for its early appearance next year. Ficaria derives from ficus, fig-shaped. Wordsworth wrote three poems about lesser celandine, and sent a pressed sample to Scottish zoologist Adam White from a sunny slope within a few yards of my house which I call Celandine Bank - it is so richly starred with that favourite plant of mine. The celandine carved on Wordsworth’s memorial in Grasmere church looks more like a greater celandine, Chelidonium majus in the poppy family, although the sculptor Thomas Woolner denied that.  

Dunnocks are the only lowland member of the Accentor genus. The old English dun- brown, + -ock, small means ‘little brown bird’ and the German name, Braunelle, is also a diminutive of brown. The easily interchangeable ‘p’ and ‘b’ resulted in Prunella;  modularis means ‘singing’. Although common, numbers declined by nearly a third from the 1970s, rebuilding slowly since the 1990s, so they are of conservation concern with amber conservation status.   

Throughout spring and summer, all birds nesting low down are highly vulnerable to disturbance by dogs running around and sticking noses into bramble and scrub, as are all the ground-nesting birds such as willow warblers, yellowhammers, chiffchaffs, tree pipit (who nest on the ground), linnets and we hope eventually the Dartford warbler and nightjar.