Abstract
THE Royal Meteorological Society has produced its annual phenological report at a welcomed early time this year, and Major H. C. Gunton, who is responsible, for the first time, for it, has not only made this issue to observers in April (which enables a convenient comparison with the following year upon which observations are beginning) but also considerably improved and altered the arrangement of the mass of details in the report, a number of very detailed and somewhat complicated graphs producing a better comparison between meteorological events and plant, insect and bird records than was hitherto possible without considerable detailed study. The records of the report chiefly show the lateness of wild-life in the colder and early-wetter and later drier-than-usual weather of 1937. The sudden departure of swifts in early August is of importance, for whatever the reason, it was true that the majority of swifts left the country during a rise in temperature, and the same thing happened in the last drought year ; they left before the hottest day of the first heat-wave in early August. Because of the mildness, seed and berry-eat ing bird winter visitors, like redwings and fieldfares, were few early in the winter ; the March cold caused an influx of waxwings in the north and siskins in the south. After a south-west gale, a wave of incoming migrants was noted on May 23, and on the whole, summer migrants left early.
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Phenology of 1937. Nature 141, 1047 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/1411047b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1411047b0