Here’s the Wildlife Trust’s guide to some of the weird and wonderful things our local wildlife gets up to at this time of year.

Spring is the start of the breeding season for many birds, including one of our most common birds, the chaffinch. At this time of year the youngest male birds begin to establish and defend their territory, often in woodlands and gardens. During the breeding season the males’ start their courtship in spring with a melodious song and showing off their bright plumage, and females use the quality of the song to help them choose the strongest mate.

Meanwhile on our lakes and wetlands like Testwood Lakes nature reserve near Totton the magnificent great crested grebe’s beautiful display is incredible to see. One bird will shallow dive, only to surface immediately in front of its intended mate. If all is going well the water ballet begins. With orange and black head plumes spread wide, an elegant ritual of head shaking, bill-dipping and preening culminates in the famous ‘penguin dance’, when the pair rush together, paddling their feet frantically to raise upright from the water, standing chest to chest, flicking a beak-full of water weed at each other before one final shake of the head and the weed is dropped, and the deal is clinched.

In springtime you can take a ringside seat at the mating ritual of our brown hares. They’re usually solitary creatures but at this time of year you might glimpse females fending off passionate mating urges from the males. The pugilists are actually the females, spurning the advances of amorous males by boxing their prospective partners.

If you’re lucky you can see females does standing on their hind legs and using their front to paws to literally box with the male bucks. Through this they test the males' strength before deciding whether to proceed on the next step of courtship. With their activity much more noticeable before grass and crops in our countryside have grown up to their full height, it is not surprising that the “mad March hare” has come to have such a strong connection with the spring.

Turning to our seas, seahorses are often thought to be very romantic species – males and females come together every morning to ‘dance’ together and reinforce their relationship. During this beautiful ritual, they often entwine their tails and move round each other. Famously females transfer their eggs into the male’s pouch, and he later gives birth to miniature offspring.

Sea hares, like all sea slugs are hermaphrodite, meaning that have both male and female reproductive organs. When it comes to mating time, they often form love chains acting as female and male to different partners simultaneously when mating! Both seahorses and sea hares can be found in the lush underwater seagrass meadows in our Solent seas.