Yes I know, everybody is fed up with this cold weather all the time, well it is still spring time and what warrants the seasonal changes is not warm weather but longer daylight times and the growing of plants, re awakening of hibernating animals, movements of animals etc.Temperature changes is also important, but not as important as people would like to think. Humans are selfish but animals and plants have needs, and struggle to survive.The yearly weather patterns are not just for us but mainly for them. Unfortunately we as humans have chosen to depart from nature,yet we still moan within are warm homes. Spare a thought for this little otter cub, unable to cope with the cold and so perished, along with many other wild animals in the UK this springtime.The cold weather could be a yearly feature, as we may be entering into an ice age. Global warming may have always been a prelude to global cooling, or could have been simply a product of our pollution, and may have been holding back the inevitable. As A child I was taught about the impending cooling period and so I am not to be brainwashed by the global warming fraternity.I do have an open mind to it all, but some things are inevitable, that is changes in weather patterns and trade winds, gulf stream and so on. I think two different factors are battling along side each other, causing the extreme weather conditions worldwide .I am sure that our sun, and the earths movement on its axis are all involved. Nature will cope and always has done.There may be extinctions, and upheavals, but it has always been that way.
Many wildfowl would normally have migrated north, but are still hanging around such as the large flocks of ducks,geese and swans. Many leave, regardless of temperatures as this does not effect them generally. The region in which they spend summer time may be free from the cold weather in which we are having at the moment. The insectivorous birds are having a tough time at the moment and any migrants from the south will perish if they cannot find enough food to sustain them. Some fly back south part of the way before returning on warmer winds. Fortunately not all of the UK is under a sheet of snow and ice. As I write this, a bumble bee has just whizzed passed the window but there is little in the way of food for it. A sallow in my garden is not quite in flower , and the forsythia is in flower.
This teal may not be a migrant but a resident as most of them are.
The temperature on heathland yesterday was fourteen degrees out of the wind, and reptiles were out basking.