Over the 2015 Christmas holiday, weird weather, unprecedented floods and potential links to climate change were in the news, with the warmest December for over a century measuring a clear 4°C above long-term averages. How is wildlife responding? Well, this morning at Cambourne, magpies were carrying twigs for nest-building, great tits were in full song, hazel catkins were dangling from branches, and lords-and-ladies leaves were unfurling. Bumblebees, solitary bees and a range of butterflies have been seen over the holiday, and slugs and snails are feeding, mating and egg-laying as they normally do in September or March; there’s no sign of hibernation or a winter lull in activity for so many species.
Because ‘spring’ flowers such as daffodils have been out in December, it’s hard to work out whether some plants are very early or very late. Twitter posts from around the country on the Botanical Society's #NewYearPlantHunt showed blooming primroses, cowslips, celandines, red campion, white comfrey, dandelions, lady’s-bedstraw, viper’s-bugloss, a range of speedwells, forget-me-nots and buttercups, yarrow, common centaury, ragwort and ivy-leaved toadflax - making it virtually impossible to work out what season we are in.