Today is St Swithin’s (or Swithun’s day) and by tradition the weather today will stick with us for the next 40 days. At the moment the sun is shining here in east Northants – I wonder!
Whatever the weather, in 40 days the swifts will be largely departed and wader passage will be well underway. I wonder whether it’ll be a great time for brown hairstreaks and silver-spotted skippers?
Back in Winchester in 850, the Bishop, St Swithin, would have been able to hear and see wolves in the Hampshire countryside, and might just have been able to encounter a brown bear, although lynx had probably departed several centuries earlier.
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Mark, Interesting that the Lynx would seem the most viable re-intro but it disappeared first. I can’t see man deliberately getting rid of it before the wolf so does that call into question how viable it really is.
Bob – I wondered the same. An enigma.
The current prolonged spell of wet weather has nothing to do with climate change, the jetstream, or even David Attenborough, but is caused by people praying excessively to St Swithun to break the drought.
I guess he was just plain Swithun when he was alive and studying wildlife in Wessex. Apparently he had an impresive line in miracles – like restoring broken eggs to wholeness. Should we look forward to the canonisation of St Dynamo, I wondereth?
Mrs Cobb informs me that it is now dry enough to edge-up the lawn. Drat!
http://newsthump.com/2012/07/06/weather-could-lead-to-months-worth-of-tedious-conversations-in-just-24-hours/