March on the Southwell Trail - Part 1

In recent months I have continued to document aspects of the Southwell Trail that interest me like the seasonal changes to trees, the weather conditions, farming activities, and latterly the wildflowers as they start to bloom, and, although I captured most of this last year, the annual cycle seems long enough to enjoy it all over again and this is what caught my attention during March:

The month started with strong gales and heavy rain which restricted the photographic activity on the  Trail to the occasional bright spells. These were some of the rain sodden scenes on the path:

Photographing the trail on a regular basis, and writing the photoblog, has encourage me to be more accurate when I am identifying wildflowers and the different trees. Sometimes, however, I have to see a tree go through a full annual cycle to be sure of its identity. For example, last year I photographed a catkin which I tentatively identified as hornbeam. Unfortunately, I only made the identification when processing my photos some months later. By then it was too late to match the photo with the tree and I had forgotten exactly where on the trail the photograph was taken.  I had a suspicion that a group of trees, that I had previous thought were young beech trees, might actually be hornbeam and this was confirmed this month as fresh catkins started to appear:

Also blooming were the willow catkins. This is one of the willows on the trail plus a close up of the catkins:

Another willow on the trail was chopped down at the start of the month which was a real shame. It was a nice tree that seemed healthy enough and wasn't obstructing the path as far as I could see. I am sure the maintenance volunteers had their reasons but I was surprised about the anger I felt when I saw only the stumps remaining. This is how the tree looked in January 2019 followed by its new condition - as I say, it is a shame that it had to be cut back so far:

Going back to the rain as the start of the month, these are some images I captured of a passing but shower. At the edge of the cloud in the first image are some heavy bulges which I am fairly sure would be an example of mammatus cloud:

As is often the case in early spring, the heavy clouds roll on in one direction and there in fine, blue sky weather in the other direction:

Some of the earliest wildflowers of the season are Lesser Celandine, these are a couple of examples:

Lastly, March is also the month where the blossom start to bloom. The earliest to flower is Damson followed by Blackthorn. Unfortunately the nicely flowering Damson below lost all its flowers in the early March gales. As for the Blackthorn flowers I have quite a few images which I will group together in the next post.