Climate change confuses migrating birds

The swallows’ return to British shores each year symbolises the passing of winter and the approach of summer.

But in a sign of the blurring of the seasons brought on by climate change, one of the birds has this year shunned migration to Africa and instead spent all winter in Britain.
In what experts say is the first documented evidence of the species “overwintering” here, a solitary swallow has been monitored from November to the end of February in a village near Truro, Cornwall.

Paul Stancliffe, a spokesman for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), called the discovery “incredible”.

Swallows fly south in the autumn, reaching as far as South Africa. They are not normally seen again in Britain until late March, although the first sighting of a returning bird this year was on February 16, on the Isle of Wight.

The one that stayed was spotted and monitored in the village of Ruan Lanihorne as part of a “bird atlas” programme run by the BTO. Members of two other species of migrating bird, the wheatear and the chiffchaff, were also found to have stayed in Britain all winter.

Telegraph