Wanted - Springwatchers
The Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland charity, and the BBC are asking everyone to keep an eye out for the first signs of spring during the second year of the enormously popular Springwatch survey.
Recording the timing of spring events is helping reveal climate change’s dramatic impact on nature. Frogspawn has already been spotted in Cornwall. Frogspawn along with seven-spot ladybirds, peacock butterflies, swifts, flowering hawthorn and the red-tailed bumblebee, makes up the six key spring indicators recorders are being asked to keep a vigilant eye on. The British public are world leaders when it comes to recording nature’s calendar – with nearly 200,000 sightings logged within the past 12 months.
Recording is a vital part of the science and the Woodland Trust is once again teaming up with Bill Oddie and the Springwatch Team, and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, for the 2006 survey. Everyone can take part, wherever they are, to help ensure Springwatch 2006 is the largest investigation into nature’s changing calendar.
Recorders’ observations have already thrown up some startling results after it emerged ladybirds and butterflies are now waking up three weeks earlier compared to 30 years ago, swifts arrive around a week earlier and one species of bumblebee is now active all year round. The hawthorn, which is also known as the Mayflower and traditionally linked to late spring, is often spotted flowering in March – all as a result of climate change.
Phenology project manager Jill Attenborough says: “Frogspawn in October, spring and summer flowers in the winter and insects active all year round prove that nature’s calendar is changing, right here in our back gardens. We need as many people as possible to join in the Springwatch survey to help us find out exactly what is going on.”
To find out more or add a record to the Springwatch survey, simply go on-line at www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch The results of the survey will be revealed during three-week series Springwatch with Bill Oddie, due to be broadcast on BBC TWO in 2006.
