The news that last month was the warmest ever February in England and Wales will not have come as much surprise – after all, we are used to weather records being broken regularly because of the climate crisis.
Towards the end of the month, temperatures in Kew Gardens in London reached a high of 21.2C (70.16F), a UK record for February. This allowed many of our resident breeding birds to start breeding a month or more earlier than usual – though the month’s record rainfall may have caused them problems. And if we do get even a brief cold snap in March or April, they may fail to raise their precious brood of chicks.
A warm February is not entirely unprecedented: 1989 was the mildest February that century at that point. This resulted from a vast area of high pressure over Iberia and southern France, producing a mild, south-westerly airstream, which raised temperatures on 5 February to an unseasonable 14C (57.2F).
What a contrast to the big freeze of the winter of 1962-63 when a persistent high pressure system between Scotland and Norway produced a bitterly cold February. Afterwards, the ornithologist and broadcaster James Fisher grimly noted: “It seems that at least half the wild birds living in this country before last Christmas are now dead.”
Yet such is the ability of small birds to bounce back that within two years, populations of most species were back to normal, as if that terrible winter had never happened.
