The one saving grace about today was the sun. In the wildlife garden at work it was sheltered from the biting easterlies and my balding noggin actually caught a bit of colour. The less than cheery news on the radio later was that the average temperature in March was the lowest in England since records began (in 1910).
An indication of what this prolonged cold spell has done to our wildlife was evident from the takings in the moth trap over the last two nights at work. There, I am able to run a 125W Mercury Vapour lamp which typically pulls in a greater range and volume of species than the 15W actinic I run at home. On Monday, I awoke to a frost-free morning, but there was not a single moth in the trap. Today, numbers rocketed. A March Moth and a Hebrew Character. Two moths. Abject. The Hebrew Character was a very fresh specimen and I suspect that it had been encouraged by the slight increase in daytime temperature to brave emergence.
Looking back on my own garden figures for March last year, on occasion I was catching over 100 moths. Admittedly, the species diversity wasn't great, but nevertheless there were plenty of moths about doing their thing, laying eggs and from which will have come the millions of caterpillars required on which many of our resident and migrant songbirds would gorge. There is a lovely stat in a Butterfly Conservation publication which estimates our 8 million Blue Tits get through 35 billion caterpillars every year.
With this delayed emergence, it makes me wonder what effect this will have for our breeding bird populations over the next couple of months, remembering that last year was also so bad. Results from the BTO's Constant Effort Sites scheme showed Blue Tit and Great Tit productivity down by over 30% in 2012.
Happy days.
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