Our Wild Things columnist Eric Brown says severe spring weather has hit butterflies, affected bird breeding and startled avian migrants arriving from sunny Africa to find Britain battered by gales, rain and snow.
Spring 2023 hasn't so much sprung as totally flopped. The most uplifting season of the year has been swept aside by strong winds and submerged beneath rain, sleet and snow.
My diary informs me that March 2022 featured plenty of sunny days with the temperature reaching 18C and only the first week seeing any substantial rain. By mid-March I'd already seen several butterflies including brimstone, red admiral, small tortoiseshell, peacock and comma basking in the sunshine. What a difference a year makes. As I write this column, with rain noisily battering the window pane, I still await my first butterfly sighting of 2023.
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All seemed to be going well at one stage with plenty of crocuses, celandine and daffodils pointing the way towards summer. As early as January 1, great spotted woodpeckers prepared to welcome spring by drumming to each other on tree trunks. My local blackbird started belting out his melodious breakfast time melody, lambs arrived early, robins upped their game from subsong to the full monty and I even spotted brown hares shadow boxing in a field. Magpies, woodpigeons and long-tailed tits all carried nest material.
Then everything went pear-shaped. Blackbirds and robins were silenced by howling north winds and any drumming sounded more like The Seekers than Keith Moon. Thirteen days of rain plus lightning, thunder, sleet and snow halted early breeding activity among insects, animals and birds.
Soon woods became puddle-strewn quagmires and unofficial lakes big enough to attract ducks popped up in fields. Of course it's great weather for ducks. No wonder garganeys, our only summer-visiting duck, arrived on schedule from Africa with the males sporting their fine white crescent slashes on brown heads.
As sleet lashed down, lightning flashed and thunder rolled what a shock it must have been for other early avian migrants from warm spots such as little ringed plovers, sand martins and wheatears. I often wonder whether during migration flights they become aware of bad weather waiting at their destinations.
Do they ever contemplate making a government-style U-turn or maybe drop down into whatever country they are crossing at that lightbulb moment?
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By the time you read this, the first cuckoo will probably have been seen or heard. Sometimes the traditional letter to The Times newspaper reporting this bird's return appears amazingly early. In the rush to be first to claim a cuckoo, could the writer have confused the incomer's monotonous two-step call with that of a collared dove?
Also on the horizon is the spectacular carpet of bluebells often suggesting woodland suffused with a non-existent lake. Hopefully their dainty heads will survive heavy rainfall and wind to herald Easter.
Glorious skylark song is being heard over farmland where swallows and swifts will swoop to hunt insects. Just don't let me hear any water company official even hinting at a summer hosepipe ban.
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