Why a Hedgerow Is the Best Place to Begin

A hedgerow in early spring is one of the most generous places in the British countryside. It is a boundary, a larder, a motorway and a nursery all at once, and unlike a woodland or a reservoir you can read it in half an hour without any special skill beyond patience. From late February through to April, the hedge wakes up in stages: first the bare-wood blossom, then the leaf, then the insects, then the birds that follow them. If you are new to nature watching, start here. A single 100-metre stretch of mixed hedge will teach you more than a dozen rushed visits to somewhere grander.

The secret is to walk it slowly and at the same time each week, so you notice change rather than just scenery. Ten minutes of standing still beats an hour of striding past.

Reading the Buds, Blossom and Catkins

The first thing to learn is that not every hedge is the same plant, and the species tells you what to expect. A good mixed hedge might hold hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, field maple, dog rose, elder and ash along one field edge.

• Blackthorn flowers on bare, almost black twigs in March, before any leaf appears — a froth of white that looks like snow caught in the hedge. It is usually the first big event of the hedgerow year.
• Hawthorn does it the other way round: leaves first, then creamy blossom in May. In early spring you are looking for its bright, freshly opened leaf buds, which unfurl a startling green against last year's darker growth.
• Hazel hangs yellow lamb's-tail catkins from January into March. Look lower down the same stems for the tiny crimson female flowers — easy to miss, and oddly thrilling once you have found one.
• Dog rose and bramble push out red-tinged new shoots and thorny growth that will feed everything from bees to blackbirds later in the year.

Down in the hedge bottom, the ground flora is worth a look too. Lesser celandine, dog's mercury, wild arum and the first violet leaves appear in the leaf litter and warm, sheltered soil, feeding early bees and hoverflies. If you see a patch of nettles, slow down — that is a butterfly nursery for later in the season.

Listening for Nesting Birds

By March the hedge is full of territory. Learn three or four voices and the whole place becomes legible.

• Dunnock — a thin, hurried, ringing song from deep inside the tangle. The hedge is its whole world.
• Wren — astonishingly loud for its size, with a hard rattle in the middle of the phrase.
• Robin and blackbird — the two you almost certainly already know, both singing hard from the hedge tops at first light.
• Chiffchaff — arrives in late March and simply says its own name, over and over. This is the sound of spring arriving.

Nesting starts early for residents. Blackbirds, song thrushes, dunnocks and robins will already be building by mid-March, and long-tailed tits — those tiny pink-and-white lollipops — construct an elastic nest of moss and cobwebs bound with lichen that stretches as the chicks grow. Watch for birds carrying nesting material or food, and note where they disappear. Then move away: it is an offence to disturb a wild bird's nest while it is in use, and a parent that thinks it is being watched may abandon the clutch.

Small Mammals and the Signs They Leave

You will rarely see small mammals, but you will see their handwriting all along the hedge.

• Runs and tunnels — neat, worn pathways through the grass at the hedge base, often dotted with dark droppings. Bank voles and wood mice use the same routes nightly.
• The smeuse — a small, smooth gap worn under the hedge where a hedgehog squeezes through. If you find one, you have found a working hedgehog corridor.
• Nibbled hazelnuts — a neat round hole with tooth marks around the rim means a wood mouse or vole; a jagged, cracked shell means a squirrel or bird.
• Woven grass balls — a harvest mouse nest, roughly the size of a tennis ball, built up off the ground among stems. Best looked for after the leaves drop, but the stems are worth checking now.

Stoats and weasels hunt these runs, moving in a low, bounding line along the hedge bottom, and you may find the remains of a badger's path or a fox's earth along the same edge. Sit quietly at dusk with your back to a gate and you have a genuine chance.

How to Watch Well Without Disturbing Anything

Go early. The first two hours after sunrise are when the hedge is at its busiest and the light is softest. Walk facing the sun where you can, so birds are lit rather than silhouetted.

Take a modest pair of binoculars — 8x42 is the standard, comfortable choice — and wear dull colours. Move in a slow, unhurried way, pausing often; birds react to sudden shapes and direct stares far more than to a person standing still. Keep dogs on a lead along hedgerows between March and July, and keep to the path rather than pushing into the hedge itself, which can crush nests and disturb the ground layer.

Take a notebook, or use your phone, and write down the date, the weather and what you saw. After a few weeks you will have something more valuable than a list: a record of one hedge coming back to life, in your own handwriting, in your own corner of the country.