We
woke up to a very hard frost today. The field outside our bedroom was
white as white – as was the scut on a rabbit that was running along
the hedge line. I’m not sure how cold it was during the night but
the temperature certainly started with a minus sign.
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| Since my last blog we have received copies of two more editions of Postcards From the Past - the UK Large Print and, below, the German hard back. |
Only
a week ago we were basking (well, everything is relative) in daytime
temperatures in double figures with the nights rarely dropping below
5°. It
is the effect this contrast is having on the plants and wildlife
around us that has been in my mind the last few days. For example,
last Wednesday as we drove from Totnes towards Avonwick we passed a
bank on which there were daffodils in full bloom: in January.
In
Cornwall they grow daffodils in their hundreds of thousands and when
the fields down there are in full bloom – usually in February –
they are a wonderful sight even though the flowers are picked whilst
the buds are quite tight. The sale of these blooms, most of which go
to London, are an important part of the local economy as are the sale
of bulbs.
When
I trawled through the various photographs of daffodils that I have
taken, I find that the one below was taken on 3 March in 2011 which
was a ‘late year’ compared to 2012 (when, for some reason I
didn’t take any). It is not that this year is proving to be an
‘early’ one but that it is totally muddled. Following a
wonderfully mild autumn and early winter we are now in the grip of
extreme cold (extreme for this part of the world that is) and I fear
for the plants – and probably animals, too – that have been
fooled into thinking spring had arrived.
My
main worry is to do with timing – although I fully appreciate that
the weather this winter is in no way unique and nature is extremely
good at solving these problems. Nevertheless, they do cause
difficulties for some species.
One of my favourite birds is the blue
tit: they are pugnacious little people who always wear an expression of
intense irritation. Baby blue tits are fed almost exclusively on
“green caterpillars” and most bird books state quite simply that
the parents “time their breeding to coincide with the hatching of
various species of insects which start life as green caterpillars”.
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| 2009 was a good year for the blue tits. Here are a brood of six youngsters, still in their juvenile yellow feathers, braving the rain and feeding on peanuts. |
This
is just not really true: I am sure that the birds are aware of
changes in the weather and do everything they can to get the timing
right but it doesn’t always work. If they get it wrong, the young
blue tits often fail to fledge and the associated insect species then
have a very good year with many more reaching adulthood. It’s a bit
like the lemmings and the snowy owls in the northern parts of
Scandinavia although there is becomes a very regular cycle.
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| A lemming
(Photo: Flickr user
leo_seta under a Creative Commons license.)
|
Year
one: there is an abundance of lemmings with the result that the snowy
owls are able to able to read larger than usual broods. That means
that in year two the lemming population is depleted because there are
so many more owls. Nevertheless, the owls still rear a goodly number
of youngsters. Their problems start in year three because there are
so few lemmings and large number of owlets fail to fledge. In year
four both species start from a low ebb but that gives an advantage to
the lemmings and by the end of the year their numbers are well up.
Then, of course, we start the cycle again. I should add that although
snowy owls are the main lemming predators they also face attack from
skuas and Arctic foxes – and that this explanation of the lemming
cycle is not universally accepted.
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Snowy Owl. Photo: Pat Haines under a Creative
Commons license
|
No
matter how it came about 2013 was a bumper year for lemmings and, as
a result, there was a population explosion among the snowy owls. But
a rather odd thing then happened – odd in the sense that this is a
first. Some snowy owls left their usual territories and decided to
explore pastures new by moving south in North America. They have
become common place in south east Canada and a few seem to have taken
up residence in Washington, D.C. There is even a report that one was
seen as far south as Charleston in South Carolina and another in
Bermuda. Bermuda? A snowy owl? Well, the report seems the be genuine.
As I remarked, nature has a wonderful way of sorting things out.
Have
any of you seen anything unusual? If so, please leave a comment
below.
Meanwhile,
you may remember that I mentioned that Marcia had been ‘interviewed’
using emails by a girl in Poland. Click here if you want to see read
that interview – in English as she publishes her work in both
languages.
