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Animals, Plants and the Weather, Natures Signs :MOD note 121
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Rather than Psychic birds I'd be more inclined to believe that any change of behaviours of our local populations of Birds in advance of cold weather is merely a simple reaction to the influx of migratory birds.
EG. Birds not bothering with my feeders for weeks but now my tables are being mobbed. The Birds must know the snow is coming and are stocking up!!
They're not Psychic, they might be facing increased competition from the aforementioned migratory Redwings for example who's annual Winter migration to here was delayed by a mild Winter in Europe but who are now flocking to our shores to escape the advancing continental cold.
Is that the exact answer? Probably not but the answer will be something similar and simple albeit not necessarily obvious but that kind of answer is magnitudes more likely than Psychic Birds or birdbrains attuned to Quantum Tachyon signals blah blah blah
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Some Redwings summer here and winter in Spain or Italy. They may have decided winter is over.They're not Psychic, they might be facing increased competition from the aforementioned migratory Redwings for example who's annual Winter migration to here was delayed by a mild Winter in Europe but who are now flocking to our shores to escape the advancing continental cold.
Is that the exact answer? Probably not but the answer will be something similar and simple
But are the White Fronted Gooses flying to Greenland yet?0 -
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Interesting thread - thanks to all the contributors. I'm very much in the 'Su Campu' rationalist camp, I don't believe animals have access to special information that eludes us.
But is there evidence for my belief? I'd like to test it.
Does anyone know a good source of historical 'nature' data, preferably stretching back for a long peiod and preferably Irish? E.g. bird migration, tree budding, etc.
We could compare them against climate records and see if there's any predictive power. I'm sure its been done before - but maybe not.
Arguing by anecdote is pointless. This is supposed to be a 'science' forum after all.
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Interesting thread - thanks to all the contributors. I'm very much in the 'Su Campu' rationalist camp, I don't believe animals have access to special information that eludes us.
But is there evidence for my belief? I'd like to test it.
Does anyone know a good source of historical 'nature' data, preferably stretching back for a long peiod and preferably Irish? E.g. bird migration, tree budding, etc.
We could compare them against climate records and see if there's any predictive power. I'm sure its been done before - but maybe not.
Arguing by anecdote is pointless. This is supposed to be a 'science' forum after all.
Someone posted here either at the end of 2010 or start of 2011 and said he ( think it was a he ) had kept a yearly diary of the last 20 or 30 years that included details of things like time of budding leaves, falling leaves, bird migrations, spring flowers etc.
I had hoped he/she would have come back again with some sort of lists and/or patterns but I haven't noticed any posts since.0 -
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I'm not in any camp.Interesting thread - thanks to all the contributors. I'm very much in the 'Su Campu' rationalist camp, I don't believe animals have access to special information that eludes us.*
*This is a very broad statement if not qualified by 'special information...regarding weather prediction'.
If your statement is to stand as quoted, then I would have to argue that animals do indeed have access to a considerable amount of information which eludes us.
We don't have sonar - bats do, they can detect things in conditions we cannot.
We can barely see in the dark, unlike most nocturnal animals.
Just what is that dog sniffing? We can't smell it.
Can we detect the electrical field of prey fish? Sharks can.
Could a human find its way from a stream in Connemara to the Sargasso Sea without map and compass? Eels can.
We have to use a compass to detect the earth's magnetic field - the direction of many migrations are determined by the animals' ability to sense this effect.
There must be thousands of examples of the sensitivity of animals (and plants) to phenomena and physical forces which we cannot even detect without mechanical assistance.
And a most important question: how and what determines the timing and variability of annual migrations? It certainly isn't a calender.
Yes meteorology is a science, and yes, this forum is under the category of science but it is not called the 'Meteorology forum'.But is there evidence for my belief? I'd like to test it.
Does anyone know a good source of historical 'nature' data, preferably stretching back for a long peiod and preferably Irish? E.g. bird migration, tree budding, etc.
We could compare them against climate records and see if there's any predictive power. I'm sure its been done before - but maybe not.
Arguing by anecdote is pointless. This is supposed to be a 'science' forum after all.
So just as your statement of belief above, is perfectly tolerable, so too is a belief in the possibility that animals may be able to detect and respond to atmospheric changes which we cannot.
If animals are capable of detecting things that we cannot and if their behaviour changes in advance of a forthcoming weather event, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the two are linked.
It is perfectly reasonable to concede that the possibility exists.
Here's a teeny bit of ''nature data".
(It is scarce so we might be stuck with anecdotal evidence)
Frogs and earthquakes0 -
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It probably means that you have a lot of frogs and frog spawn, due to the mild wet weather we've had.Diamond Dust wrote: »There is an extreme amount of frogs and frog spawn near my house never see so much. does it mean anything? Probably from the mild, wet weather we've had I suppose
I wouldn't read anything into population fluctuations amongst animals or plants.
These fluctuations tend to be responses to recent environmental conditions rather than portents of future weather.
It's nature's way.
If a species produces a super abundance of progeny one year, you can be pretty damn sure that mother nature will do something to reduce that population, one way or the other.
I often hear people saying that a superabundance of Rowan berries in the Autumn is a sign of a bad Winter to come.
It's not, it's simply a product of the preceding Spring and Summer.
Now animal behaviour........that's a completely different matter 0 -
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Was walking home from town today, and it's very muggy and warm. There are clouds rising on the horizon, and it feels like one of those moments when a thunderstorm is imminent. I noticed that the birds were particularly clamorous, congregating in larger numbers than I would have noticed recently, and generally making an awful racket. This got me to thinking about the storie one hears about animals fleeing before storms, and birds anticipating the same. I always thought they were apocryphal, but then I'm a bit of a cynic in general. So I thought I'd turn to the to good denizens of the weather forum to inform me- can animals "forecast" the weather?
<insert jokes about birds predicting the weather on RTE here> 0 -
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