Once again: "Sure, it isn't this time of year at all." and it seldom is. Much of our conversation, after all, in town or countryside, is about how this year's crops/weather/flowers/ fishing conditions or whatever differ from normal times. There are no normal years. All have their own distinctive stamp. A friend, for example, who cuts grass for several institutions on a weekly basis, says that, to keep up with the present growth, he should be cutting twice a week.
You can look for deviations where they don't exist. For example, a neighbour was excited to find that, about ten days ago, a pair of swallows were plastering mud on to a gable corner of his house. At the other end of the gable, another pair had already raised two broods, and might, even be going into a third. So was this second pair beginning a new nest well into August? Erratic behaviour? "Not this time of year at all"? The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland, with the official stamp of not only the British Trust for Ornithology but also our own Irish Wildbird Conservancy, sets the record straight.
It says of the swallow: "Nests with eggs and young may be found from early May to mid-September. And two broods are usual; successful pairs commonly rearing three." And, of course, the farther North you go in these islands, the later the nesting may be. But a correspondent from sandymount, Dublin, covers much ground, often with pessimism. "The news says that mosquitoes may become a problem in East Germany and Poland after the floods. No one mentioned Clonmel or Carrickon-Suir." She goes on: "There has not been birdsong in Pembroke east since early June; the first wasp showed up on August 7th, wild bees are just appearing and butterflies are a remarkable sight. The Common Blue butterflies were out on May 12th this year; they normally come on view in the second half of August."
She goes on to her main thesis: "I do not know what you media people are up to. Is this Rachel Carson's Silent Spring? . . . Why are the oil companies able to silence the press? One third of the oil recovered on the planet goes to make plastics which have to be incinerated to be destroyed." She is in a state of disbelief about concessions on exploration given here to oil companies. Anyway: the mantra stands: "It isn't this time of year at all."