nature going a little haywire.

[itsallyellow]

Its early Feb and I've already noticed Frogs and Toads in my local parks out of hibernation. The canal near by is full of swans, this has been all year round now and I first noticed about 3 years ago.. I thought they were territorial things but I counted 41 the other day and all looked pretty happy together. A couple of them haven't even malted and are still grey/brown. Another thing is I can recall tadpoles from a friends pond that never changed into frogs and just got larger and happily swam around until the winter frosts killed them. Birds that sing all hours. Anyone else noticed weird things about our wildlife lately. And why is it happening?

[WendyS]

Well, I'm still waiting patiently for the first frog in my garden to come out of hiberation and make it to my pond and I certainly haven't got any frogspawn yet. But some immature late tadpoles from last year, which I spotted in the pond in November seem to have died. We have lots of birds singing all hours around here now but I suspect that's because we've had so many burglaries in our area that everybody is terrified of crime and lots of houses have installed outside security lighting which gets triggered on and off all through the night by passing cats and visiting foxes !

[Lonnie]

I'm not sure about nature going haywire, of course, at present the seasons appear to be coming earlier, and overall, it seems warmer than it should be, I think its a question of circles, when you look at Britain in the Roman times, it was a lot warmer than it is now, best thing is to stay alive long enough, and you'll see a full circle.

[daveystott]

Frogs commonly emerge from hiberbation in January in SW England and Feb elsewhere. Toads usually a bit later, but Feb nothing out of ordinary.

Swans, like many birds, flock together in winter and don't become territorial until the breeding season, so watch out in Spring! Juveniles will retain brown plumage well into first winter and beyond.

Birds that sing all hours - too much street lighting!