2008: the year so far

The great thing about wildlife-watching – especially in the UK – is that no two years are the same. This year was no exception, as the second wet summer in a row affected our wild creatures in a myriad of different ways. Series editor Stephen Moss gives a round-up of some of the winners and losers, the key news stories, and long-term trends such as climate change, and how it is affecting our wildlife.

Birds:

The BTO has, as always, produced data showing what happened during the breeding season. Here are the key headlines:

- Overall it was a challenging spring and summer for many of our breeding birds, due to the above average rainfall which can reduce food supplies and cause baby birds to die from starvation.
- Multi-brooded species, such as the blackbird and starling, did alright – as always, they were able to lay again if the first brood was lost to bad weather.
- Single-brooded species, such as the blue tit and buzzard, tawny owl and mute swan, did less well – the cool, wet spring and summer didn't do them any favours.
- But one tit species, the long-tailed tit, did quite well, because they nested early enough to catch the decent weather during the early part of the spring, and managed to raise their broods before the wet weather set in.
- Heavy rain in late May caused havoc amongst colonies of ground-nesting gulls and waders, with black-headed gull, ringed plover and sandwich tern nests washed out. Avocets also suffered badly.

On the bright side, a number of newcomers to our shores either bred or attempted to breed. Stars of the show were two pairs of cattle egrets in Somerset, a species which has long been predicted as a potential new colonist as a British breeding bird. This was the very first time the species has bred in Britain, but given its success in colonising the rest of the world it seems likely that cattle egrets will become a permanent addition to our avifauna in the next few years.

Spoonbills also bred – for only the third time ever in Britain – with a pair raising three young on the RSPB's Mersehead reserve in Dumfries and Galloway. And another southern species, black-winged stilt, attempted to breed in Cheshire, hatching a single chick which unfortunately didn't survive.

Insects and amphibians:

For our insects, the washout of summer 2008 really was a bit of a disaster. As well as the bees we featured in Autumnwatch earlier this week, butterflies and moths had a disastrous year – the National Trust's Matthew Oates described it as "the worst season in the 45 years since I began watching butterflies".

Butterfly Conservation monitors populations of the 60 or so British species, and have seen a major decline in most, especially the once-common small tortoiseshell. Only the two species of 'cabbage white', large and small white, appear to be thriving. A number of once-common species are now at an all-time low.

Moths also had a bad year – with very few migrants and many species well down in numbers. Only mosquitoes thrived – they love damp conditions and do well in such wet summers.

Another group of creatures up against it are our amphibians. Frogs, toads and newts are threatened by a worldwide problem in the shape of the chytrid fungus, which threatens to devastate populations at home and abroad.

Flora:

This year's fruit and berry crop has been a pretty good one, though many have now been consumed by hungry birds stocking up for the winter or piling on energy before heading south on migration. But even here there have been exceptions: conkers have been badly affected by the leaf-miner moth which infests horse chestnut trees; while in the wider countryside, many commercial fruits (and indeed other crops such as wheat and barley) have rotted in the ground because of the constant wet weather.

Ironically, though, the wet weather has produced one of the best autumns ever for displays of leaf colour: experts at Kew Gardens believe that the wet summer, followed by a mild early autumn, are responsible for the gorgeous colours all over the British countryside.

The big picture:

On a wider scale, environmental change continues to provide both problems and opportunities for our wildlife.

On the positive side, many of the UK's resident songbirds are laying eggs up to two weeks earlier than 40 years ago. On the down side, seabird colonies continue to suffer from the changes in sea temperature that in some cases have meant the disappearance of their staple food, sand-eels, from the seas around them. One of our best-loved marine mammals, the common or harbour seal, has also suffered from severe declines – whether climate change is responsible or not is as yet not known.