My last blog focused on the long cold winter, which turned out to be the longest and coldest since 1976. I said that, in the long run, I thought it would do the countryside good. I would like to follow this theme a little further.
A succession of warm winters and 'early springs' have drawn hibernating wildlife such as bees and bats out too early at a time when there was a dearth of wild flowers and insects and a possibility of a return to winter conditions - very much to the detriment of the species involved. Mammals also bred too early which made it difficult to raise their young when the cold weather put in a reappearance.
Experts are predicting that this more gradual transition into spring will mean that the season will last longer and flora and fauna will appear more gradually and that the flowers will stay around longer. This has certainly been borne out by this year's fantastic displays of snowdrops which have been around for over six weeks now. Crocus are now brightening lawns and some, but by no means all, daffodils are blooming.
We are finding these consecutive waves of spring flowers such a pleasure after a succession of springs in which everything appears in February and is gone by the end of March. This sudden reversion, whether a 'one-off' or not, to a more traditional seasonality has caused a few problems to organisers of 'snowdrop walks' and 'daffodil days' who had set their schedules in time with the 'new seasons' but it does remind us not to take mother nature for granted. There is a very good article on the BBC website.
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