Sunny Nature has a spring in its step – but it’s out of kilter
I’ve an inbuilt awareness of mid-february temperatures. My birthday falls on the 15th: about the worst day of the calendar for dispiriting weather. But not in 2019. This year on my birthday I was striding through a Lincolnshire garden planted with snowdrops, crocuses and cyclamen, the sun sparkling on what might have been jewels strewn among the grass. Crocuses, like aconites, won’t open unless the temperature rises above eight degrees. No fear of that this year; the bulbs formed a carpet of mauve, white, magenta and yellow. The scent of honeysuckle charmed my nose. A skylark sang overhead. What a day to be alive.
It’s even warmer this week, and we’re loving it. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to abandon ourselves entirely to the joys of early spring. As a shopkeeper said to me, after we’d exchanged the usual platitudes about the day: “Beautiful, but I dread to think of the trouble being stored up for our grandchildren.”
Admittedly this was in Ramsgate, which has a Mrs Gummidge-like disposition to find things “going contrary”. But many of us suffer the same doubts. The Woodland Trust (for which I am an ambassador) tracks the first sightings of species through its Nature’s Calendar project, and thinks that spring actually started in November. Something must be awry.
The evidence of Nature is irrefutable. In Merthyr Tydfil, a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly flew about on Christmas Day. A Red Admiral, which should not emerge until May, popped up in Cambridgeshire five months early – on December 17. In previous centuries, these appearances would have been taken as miracles or portents.
Of course, early nesting blackbirds may yet be caught out by a cold snap. Last year, the Beast from the East came howling in at the end of February: bad news for the Chetti’s Warbler, a relatively recent colonist, which prefers warmer climes. Numbers crashed.
Yet even without a late freeze, the natural world seems out of kilter. Birds that rely on caterpillars to feed their broods may find they’ve all gone by the time the chicks arrive. In woods, bud burst and peak caterpillar are short-lived. Pied flycatcher, coming from abroad, may not realise that it should have arrived earlier, until too late.
And all this is happening when Nature’s stressed, thanks to loss of habitat, the rapid spread of diseases such as Ash Die-back, and invasive species hitching a lift on ships. According to the conservation charity Plantlife, 97 per cent of our wildflower meadows have disappeared since the 1930s, which rather takes the bloom off a pretty day.
There is, however, good news. One is the Nature’s Calendar survey itself. “Citizen science,” says the Woodland Trust’s Charlotte Armitage, “is a powerful tool.” It not only provides data but also inspires engagement. Second is Nature’s never-to-be-underestimated resilience. Last March, when the late snow came, we agonised over the fate of species whose young had been wiped out. But they’ve nearly all bounced back. Even Chetti’s will soon be up to pre-beast strength. Birds that thrive on cold weather, like the ptarmigan, may find the more balmy climate difficult to survive; but the little egret, which first came here from the Mediterranean in the 1990s, loves it. Third is the fact that the early sunshine is irresistible. Go out and enjoy it. Next February may be back to gloom.