It begins with the insects and spreads to the birds. Then, before you know it, your backyard is filled with wilting grass and the stench of tiny rotting corpses.
Spring might be celebrated as a new beginning, but when it comes this early, it is the beginning of the end. At least for the wildlife.
This year’s extreme, near record-low snowfall expected for the month of March, could smash nature’s delicate pattern. It could spell Armageddon for insects, the lifeblood of your backyard’s ecosystem.
Those that survive will likely do so by hatching early, only to find plants have not yet sprouted. Either way, the birds are in trouble.
Birds time their hatching periods to coincide with traditional peaks in the insect population, when the most food is available for their young. But this year they will be lucky to regurgitate a blade of grass.
Mice, which also subsist largely on insects, will die, too. So will herbivores such as rabbits, which face an early-season drought fed by a lack of melting snow. To say nothing of your grass.
It is tempting to blame climate change, but this spring is 100 per cent natural.
In fact, said U of T professor Bryan Karney, it is virtually impossible to witness climate change in real time.
