OUT OF STEP
IN THE LATE SPRING OF 2020, PEOPLE ACROSS Britain started to notice a strange absence from the skies. Swallows, those harbingers of summer that are steeped in centuries of folklore, were nowhere to be seen. Birdwatchers from the east coast to Cornwall, from the Midlands to the south coast, were all reporting a dearth of the migratory bird from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The curious case of the missing swallows, which usually arrive in Britain to breed each spring, was eventually solved. The culprit? The weather. On the night of 5th April that year, a storm had whipped up over the Aegean Sea around Greece, just as flocks of swallows (and swifts) were migrating north. Southerly winds pushed them into Aegean air currents that proved too powerful for many of the already exhausted birds. Over subsequent days, thousands of dead swallows littered the streets and balconies of Athens.
Such extreme weather events are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change. And the way in which our weather is changing overall is thought to
