Brian's Nature Diary for March 2008
As I write this the chaffinches in my garden are having a high old time, the males chasing one another through the still bare tracery of twigs. My guess is they are already mated so these excitable rituals are probably ironing out the precise details of where one territory ends, and another begins. It is notable that in all but the very rarest of cases disputes are settled with never a trace of bloodshed, nor even a feather ruffled. This sham fighting is the rule for many species of animals. Even butterflies may be seen squaring up to one another with not a single delicate scale from their wings dislodged. Is there a lesson here for we humans? I think there is.
Another record-breaking winter looks set to be on the cards as climate change begins to tighten the screw. Yet again temperatures for weeks remained above the long-term average, and while this has helped with heating bills, all that has really happened is that this has masked in some small degree the whopping increases passed on to us by the suppliers.
As oil and gas supplies begin to run out there is now a move to replace them with ethanol and biofuels. But it is abundantly clear that the production of these only adds to the global warming problem. And there is also the moral issue. Do we grow these crops to fill our fuel tanks, or to fill our bellies. To me that is the stark truth.
I seem to have sunk into ‘doom and gloom’ mode again. I had better snap out of it. Looking out of my window on to another bright and sunny, if chilly day, I can see thousands of tiny specks, fine as dust, caught and held in the sunlight. These animated dots, perhaps midges or aphids, whirl to and fro, up and down, from side to side, rapidly changing direction as they go about their mysterious business. To me their aerobatics seem frantic in their intensity, their flight having a power that belies their minute size. But what are they up to? Once again we come up against unanswered questions, part of the unknown natural world that is out there for all to see, though few of us bother to look.
‘A peck of March dust is worth a kings’ ransom’. So goes the old saying. It means that our forbears knew that the planting and growing season, on which they depended, could get underway when the soil had warmed a little, and was dry enough to be workable. Upon such things their very lives literally depended.
‘If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb’. Another old saying which I hope will prove to be true this year, for as I write this on the second day of the month, we here have had two nights of ferocious near gale-force winds. Strong enough to blow huge 40 ton containers off the rails in the north of England.
Environmental tip of the month: get planting as if your lives depended upon it. | 
