If I die of natural causes it will be in the month of March. It's when I am at my lowest ebb, most stressed, even though it is spring, for me the winter isn't over yet. Last year there was a heavy fall of snow in early March after a fairly mild if wet winter. Same again this year, no snow and hardly any frost all winter then snow again in late February and early March.
Our seasons have changed, there can be no doubt about it, plum trees flowered in January this year, but now it is colder than it was in January, some buds are struggling to burst on the hawthorn, but it is like as if spring has been put on hold for now.
Our birds are finding it tough too. Yesterday as I drove into my yard I noticed a sparrow hawk perched on the gable over the front door, he didn't fly away as I approached, I say 'he' because males are smaller. He had no fear of me, if anything he looked hungry and miserable. We try and have an unkempt garden to provide food and shelter for wildlife, perhaps he had his eye on a blackbird or the pair of wood pigeon who have started nesting in the ivy on the garden wall. If our top predator birds like a sparrow hawk are having trouble surviving then it is a good indicator that the whole ecosystem is in trouble. I see hawks regularly flying along the road about 6 feet above the ground then diving through a field gateway, or hovering on a stiff breeze watching their prey, but I rarely see them near the house or in the garden, but that's the second time I saw a hawk in a garden this week.
Occasionally I see a barn owl too at dusk, I believe he roosts in the roof of an old house in the yard, s/he's the reason I don't lay rat bait in the yard, but I haven't seen it since the autumn. There are also some pheasants who gather up the scraps of meal after feeding cattle. For anyone who thinks wild game meat hasn't been fed GM food, I hate to tell you but you might want to re-think that one next time you are ordering something gamey in a fancy Dublin restaurant.
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