First Signs of Spring

Are the signs getting earlier?

I love seeing the first signs of Spring after a long cold winter! At the weekend, we were delighted to see these male catkins on a Hazel tree in Edinburgh’s Figgate Park (too early yet for the tiny red female flowers to show on this tree).

I’ve also seen snowdrops and even crocuses flowering in various parts of Edinburgh. Lovely to see, but it feels very early, too early.

Winters in Edinburgh and many other parts of the UK, aren’t generally as long or cold as they used to be and we get far less snow nowadays. Of course, there may be an element of nostalgia in that statement, in the same way as childhood summers were always hot and sunny and lasted forever, whereas in reality that was only true of the summer of 1976. On the other hand, there is a lot of scientific evidence that Spring is arriving earlier. For example, a study done in 2022 (quoted in this article) found that some plants were flowering a full month earlier in 2019 than they had done in 1987.

This has a knock-on effect on other wildlife. If trees are leafing earlier, then the number of caterpillars peaks earlier. Birds, such as Blue Tits, which feed on the caterpillars find that the peak caterpillar numbers no longer match the time when their chicks need the most food, which may mean fewer chicks reaching adulthood.

Studying the seasonal changes in nature is known as phenology. If you’re in the UK, you can help The Woodland Trust to keep a track of our changing seasons by joining in with Nature’s Calendar to record the dates of key events for selected species during the changing seasons. The Nature’s Calendar database contains almost three million records, which are used by researchers to explore the effects of weather and climate on timings in wildlife. You can find links to some of this research here.

Bird Corner

While walking through the Figgate Park, taking photos of Hazel catkins, we noticed a Dipper in the Figgate Burn. It was flying around and looking for food in the water, moving too quickly for a photo, but delightful to watch. My first Dipper of the year!

I’ve Been Published

Thanks to the Ekphrastic Review for including one of my poems in the selection of responses to We Are All Eve by Monica Marks https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges

What I’ve Been Reading

I’ve just finished reading Metamorphosis, Grist’s 2024 collection of thought provoking short stories about various aspects of the climate crisis. I was sent a hard copy of the collection (I seem to have won it somehow, but can’t remember entering a competition for it!) and have been reading through it gradually.