Learning from the past

The wealth of historical phenological records allows us to examine the trends from the past and make cautious predictions of what may happen to species in the future.

Marsham's legacy

Marsham's records did not stop with his death in 1798. Successive generations kept up this information gathering until 1958 when sadly they stopped, just at the point when the cumulative impact of burning fossil fuels and forest destruction began to have an accelerating effect on the world's climate.

Royal Meteorological Society

From 1875 until 1947 the Royal Meteorological Society co-ordinated a nation-wide network of recorders to examine the relationship between meteorological events and the natural world.

In 1899 there were 155 phenological observers contributing records. They were asked to record the flowering of 13 plants, and the appearance of birds and insects.

"The weather for the phenological year ending November 1899 was chiefly remarkable for its high temperatures, scanty rainfall, and splendid record of sunshine. The winter and summer were significantly warm seasons, while the autumn was also warm; but during the three spring months rather low temperatures prevailed. In the early part of the flowering season, wild plants came into blossom in advance of their mean dates, but after March they were mostly late in coming into bloom."

Edward Jeffree reviewed all the flowering records from this scheme in 1960. Those for hazel, wood anemone, hawthorn and ivy have been summarised. One of the most significant results is the late flowering of hazel and wood anemone during the cooler springs of the 1940s.

Jean Combes

Jean Combes started her phenological records in 1947. They provide invaluable information for the post-war period when climate change was beginning to become a major environmental issue.

The oak leafing dates collected by Jean have achieved a certain amount of fame (they are used in the UK Indicators of Climate Change and the State of the Countryside 2004 report for example) and dates from 1950 to 2005 are shown in the graph opposite (click on the graph to view an enlarged version). There has been a huge advance in leafing dates over this half-century and the very early springs from the 1990s are evident.

Mary Manning

Mary Manning began recording natural events in 1965, when she went out into her garden to note down the number of flowering plants on Christmas Day. She lives only a few miles from the Marsham estate in Norfolk and, as with Jean Combes, her observations can also be combined with Marsham’s (click on graph to view). ‘Although restricted to her garden,’ says Tim Sparks of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, ‘Mary Manning’s detailed recording over the last 40 years has filled in an important gap. It is the consistency rather than the scope of the recording that really matters; all long-term data consistently recorded are extremely valuable. We are delighted that despite recent illness Mary is still recording and is a strong supporter of phenology.’ Although she does not have access to the Internet, she has promised to send in her observations as she records them, so that you can view live graphs of her whole series in combination with that of the Marsham family spanning an incredible 270 years.
Hugh Beggs

In a completely different part of the country, at Sale near Manchester, retired schoolmaster Hugh Beggs has carefully plotted the fortunes of the spring daffodils in his garden for more than 20 years, recording the information on a graph. The average flowering date for the first 10 years was 11 March, while that for the most recent 10 years was 26 February: an average of 13 days earlier. ‘The observations of Hugh Beggs in Manchester bear a remarkable similarity to those of Mary Manning in Norfolk,’ says Tim Sparks. ‘In our wildest dreams, we couldn’t have hoped for data that good.’ Visit our interactive resource ‘climate change in your garden’ to find out more about the importance of daffodil records, including those recorded on a shed door!

Anne Philips

Whereas some have confined themselves to recording just one natural event, others have recorded everything within reach. Anne Phillips from Walsall in the West Midlands began observing nature as a schoolgirl in the 1930s, noting in her diaries the dates of arrival of wild flowers in her area. In 1976 she began recording 39 annual events more systematically, 27 of which demonstrate a significant response to warmer temperatures by occurring earlier in warmer years. Her observations show that horse chestnut and silver birch are now leafing an average of 12 days earlier, blackbirds are nesting 14 days earlier, and frogspawn and tadpoles are appearing 16 days earlier. ‘Overall there is a definite trend towards earlier spawning,’ says Tim Sparks, ‘although it’s not the best indicator of climate change because frogspawn varies so much in timing from year to year.’

Anne Hall

Plants tend to be much more reliable in their response to temperature, and the general tendency is that they too are flowering sooner. Some 55 years ago, the late Anne Hall from Northumberland started a card index recording the flowering dates of about 200 plant species, including aconite, bellflower and corncockle. ‘I’d had an interest in flowers and birds since childhood,’ she said when asked about her recording, ‘but I hadn’t the knowledge for birds, and birds won’t stay still!’

Until the late 1990s, Anne covered a large area of her home county entirely by means of public transport, though into her nineties she tended to record mainly in her garden. ‘Anne Hall’s is a particularly useful set of data,’ says Tim Sparks. ‘Not only does it fill a gap in time but it plugs a geographical gap too. There tend to be more records in the South East, where the majority of the population lives, than in the North and elsewhere.’
Regional climate change groups are working throughout the UK and have to identify appropriate indicators to monitor climate change in their region. UKPN data are being requested to provide long regional datasets, which they can then use as phenological indicators. Anne Hall’s 50 years of snowdrop records have already been used along with current data in the Northeast.

Christine d'Albert

Lone individuals may not be aware of the importance of the data they are collecting, but seemingly inconsequential events recorded over the years can be highly significant when overlaid with temperature data. Christine d’Albert from Herefordshire recalled how for her birthday on 22 May her mother would always bake her a cake, poking drinking straws in the top and inserting a bluebell into each straw among the candles. ‘My memory goes back to 1944,’ she says, ‘and my mother’s practice continued into the early 1950s. In recent years I have watched bluebells flowering much earlier – more like 22 April and as early as 19 April in 2001.’ In 1979 she started to keep a nature diary, recording things as and when they happened. ‘After a few years I was able to look back and often found birds and butterflies reappearing on the same dates or in the same place,’ she says. ‘Gradually I’ve built up a more detailed picture of my smallholding. A few minutes recording nature notes can give hours of pleasure, and I’m thrilled to know that they can be useful too in the study of climate change.’