Following the rather unsettled year of 2004 things had to improve this year. Although the summer did take some time to arrive, overall we had a reasonable summer, which then went on into October with well above average temperatures until mid-month.
Although summer temperatures were very warm at times, long settled sunny periods have been few and far between again this year. The hottest and most settled period occurred during the latter part of June and well into July. Interspersed with some quite heavy downpours, this kept the vegetation growing and has given most farmers a good harvest this year. This was excellent for early summer butterflies and helped many breeding species of bird to have another good breeding season.
The beginning of the year started very mild but as we continued into February and March spells of low temperatures and snowfalls made things difficult for some wildlife. Indeed temperatures were so low that a lot of frogspawn was killed when laid in shallow pools that froze regularly.
Where the spawn was left in deeper ponds this spawn fared better.
As I wrote this article in early December, we had recently being experiencing some very cold and frosty conditions.
Will this be a foretaste of the predicted hard winter to follow?
