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Hard Winter Signs


Feltwad
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Don't know what all this talk of a good summer is about. Up here north in the Cheshire semi tundra it's spent the last 4 months trying to snow! Just readying the four track with neat alcohol coolant and de-icing the polar bear traps....

Edited by Glenlivet
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Down south we bask in warm sunshine and dryness, and long may it continue. I do a rain and snow dance like the red Indians going round in circles,chanting like a lunatic to send all of the nasty stuff up north over Scotland and their leader. ( Haven't heard anything from her lately). Loads of countries have good shooting without snow,frost rain and other miserable weather to contend with.

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They already have, it was all over Facebook a week or so ago, according to my GF. She read it to me, saying that it was going to be a bad winter. I asked if was from the 'Express' to which she said 'yes', 'Don't worry, they print that every year, in the hope they will get it right some time'.

 

The long range forecast looks... well just normal. Although they agree they have no real idea! Won't be long till the express prints "ice age coming" same old tosh every year!

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Saw my first migration of Fieldfares this morning all coming of the east coast , the flight lasted just over one hour with many hundreds of birds passing over. Some say that they are just in front of bad weather or is it just another folklore?

Feltwad

Glad you mentioned this i saw two this morning. Comented to my mate.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I don't think that nature can predict the weather anymore than we can. I think they react to it and make the most of it. Migrant Birds arriving later than usual normally are making the most of good weather in their breeding grounds, very similar to the way Swallows and Martins do here when its a warm Autumn.

 

Field fares and redwings are Thrushes and prefer to feed in the fields on insects and worms. When the fields get cold and the earthworms retreat they move their attention to the hedgerow berries so if the weather is mild they will leave the berries on the hedgerows until it gets cold. Over the years folklore has suggested that they know its going to be a hard winter so they leave the berries but this just isn't so.

 

Another fable centres around rooks..build high in the trees and its going to be a mild spring build lower and it will be wet and windy. Generally its just the young and inexperienced birds that build in the tops of the canopy because that's the only space that is left.

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I'm also in the camp of not putting any store in the old wives tales. Over the years I've observed most of them, with the berries being prevalent, but it just doesn't ring true.

 

I think it boils down to something much more along the line of us wanting to find a pattern or meaning or belief in something but unfortunately I honestly don't think it can be any more accurate than it will/will not be a hard winter (delete as appropriate).

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  • 2 weeks later...

At sea level where I am it's already been a harder winter than the last couple. It's been below zero for the last three days in my village and the hills are white from above about 400 meters.

 

I did have some goose shooting to do for a friend but this cold snap has frozen the ground in the problem fields, so the geese are elsewhere, at the moment. It was even colder up there than it is where I am yesterday afternoon, being -3ºC at 3.30, so likely much colder first thing this morning. Things may mild off later in the week but it'll need to warm some to thaw the ground.

 

Quite a few big flocks of redwing and fieldfare about the place at the moment, they had the berries scoffed in most locations by the start of November. Plenty waxwings over on the east coast too.

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