Climate change is causing chaos here at the Croft.
It's too warm for a normal October (we've had temperatures over 30º Centigrade) and the plants are reacting by producing flowers in what is officially the Autumn.
First, the plum tree came into flower - this picture was taken just a few days ago:
Then the pear tree did the same - this picture was taken yesterday:
The cycle is broken, and there will be obvious effects; my bees will be confused, and so will other pollinators that might try to hatch another brood when their predators have left for warmer climes - for example the Bee Eater, Meriops apiaster, left for Africa a few weeks ago. But there may be other, less obvious effects. As Dr. Josep Peñuelas at CREAF, Catalonia, showed in 2009, the volatile gasses emitted by the plants could feed back into a climate change loop, potentially accelerating the climate crisis.
The ants are our annual clock. The winged alates (the ants would probably say "wingèd"...) emerge each year to mate and form new colonies. As the Natural History Museum points out in its excellent website, ants do not always swarm on the same day each year, but rather across a season.
October is late for ant swarms...and I spotted no swallows or swifts in the sky catching the alates. The swallows and swifts have gone south, too early.
The climate emergency creates collateral damage all over Nature. We, Homo "sapiens", could stop that. Will we?
Source:
It's too warm for a normal October (we've had temperatures over 30º Centigrade) and the plants are reacting by producing flowers in what is officially the Autumn.
First, the plum tree came into flower - this picture was taken just a few days ago:
 |
| Plum tree, stoned |
Then the pear tree did the same - this picture was taken yesterday:
 |
| An ice pear? |
The cycle is broken, and there will be obvious effects; my bees will be confused, and so will other pollinators that might try to hatch another brood when their predators have left for warmer climes - for example the Bee Eater, Meriops apiaster, left for Africa a few weeks ago. But there may be other, less obvious effects. As Dr. Josep Peñuelas at CREAF, Catalonia, showed in 2009, the volatile gasses emitted by the plants could feed back into a climate change loop, potentially accelerating the climate crisis.
The ants are our annual clock. The winged alates (the ants would probably say "wingèd"...) emerge each year to mate and form new colonies. As the Natural History Museum points out in its excellent website, ants do not always swarm on the same day each year, but rather across a season.
October is late for ant swarms...and I spotted no swallows or swifts in the sky catching the alates. The swallows and swifts have gone south, too early.
The climate emergency creates collateral damage all over Nature. We, Homo "sapiens", could stop that. Will we?
Source:
Peñuelas, Josep, This Rutishauser, and Iolanda Filella. ‘Phenology Feedbacks on Climate Change’. Science 324, no. 5929 (15 May 2009): 887–88. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1173004.
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