For birdwatchers, now is the winter of discontent
The record-breaking ‘wet and mild’ spell will affect this weekend’s Big Garden Birdwatch, says Joe Shute
If you go down to the garden today – as more than half a million of us will – you may find yourself in for a big surprise. It is not just the 600 British wild flowers already in unseasonal bloom, nor the daffodil bulbs that have exploded prematurely early into riotous yellow. Nor is it the mammoth grey squirrels grown obese on the extra nourishment taken on to sustain them through cold months that have never materialised.
The true barometer of this freakish winter is the birds. And this weekend’s 37th annual Big Garden Birdwatch is expected to throw up some of the most unusual results in its history.
Winter 2016 has been a miserable affair. December was Britain’s wettest month ever, with almost double the average rainfall. It was also the warmest December on record, with an average temperature of 46.2F (7.9C) – that’s 4.1C above average.
Despite the recent week-long cold snap, January has failed to restore any equilibrium, while winter storms – such as the latest incarnation, Gertrude – continue to batter us. The fear that climate change could eradicate the seasons by which we live becomes more real by the minute.
The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, taking place this weekend, is the world’s largest wildlife survey. People are encouraged to count birds for an hour, record and submit the results.
Last year, some 8.5 million birds were counted by 585,000 people. But for 2016, participants may find there are rather slim pickings.
Normal winter migrants, such as fieldfare and brambling, are virtually non-existent, having remained in Scandinavia and continental Europe as there is no need to search for warmer climes.
Likewise, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), which compiles week-by-week data, shows only four per cent of gardens have recorded sightings of redwing this January, down on an average of 7.5 per cent. Even fewer (3.1 per cent) have recorded a sighting of fieldfare, down on an average of 5.8 per cent.
Siskin, those small yellow-bellied black-peaked beauties, are also expected to be practically absent from this year’s study.
Other tiny birds such as long-tailed tits, wrens and goldcrest – normally driven into gardens by the cold – remain out in the countryside. It is so warm that even some summer visitors, such as swallows and swifts, have been spotted this month in Kent.
The absence of wintering birds is exacerbated by the long-term decline of other once-abundant species, such as the house sparrow, starling and song thrush (whose numbers have dropped by 71 per cent, 80 per cent and 70 per cent respectively since the survey began in 1979).
“It’s too soon to say what the effect of all this will be,” says Clare Simm, of the BTO garden birdwatch team. “We don’t know what this is going to do to the breeding season. It will be an interesting year of results.”
It is not all bad news. Finches – in particular, goldfinch – seem to be prospering, while the orange-andblue tree-scuttling nuthatch is also doing well.
One brutish interloper thriving during the unusual warmth is the squawking parakeet. Britain’s only naturalised parrot, which some say became established after escaping from Pinewood Studios during the filming of The African Queen, is extending its dominance out from London. A study from 2014 found that parakeets are adept at pushing out other garden birds, blue tits and great tits in particular.
David Darrell-Lambert, 43, who runs ornithological surveys for his company Bird Brain UK, and has been collating records in Highgate, north London, says: “We’ve got huge numbers that just haven’t been coming in from continental Europe. And the birds that are here have started breeding really early. I’ve seen tits and robins that are looking ready to breed. Really, you wouldn’t expect them to do that until March.”
The fear for Darrell-Lambert and other experts is that a cold snap could wipe out populations of birds already nesting. “If they get the breeding time wrong and it gets cold again, it could be absolutely catastrophic for the birds,” he says.
The RSPB uses the results from the survey, published in late March, to create an annual snapshot of bird numbers across the UK.
It may prove a depressing footnote to a freakish winter most of us already wish to forget.