Absolutely, if the UK’s climate becomes more variable - wetter winters, drier summers - the impact on woodlands and chalk grasslands could be significant.

Not just in how they look, but in how their seasonal patterns hold together.

#UKNature #ClimateAndNature #WildClocks

This is exciting.

Climate shapes a landscape - but soil determines how that climate is felt.

Bringing open soil data together with rainfall and temperature records could help explain why similar weather produces very different seasonal outcomes.

#SoilHealth #ClimateAndNature #Ecology #WildClocks

We often talk about spring arriving earlier. But I wonder if in some years it also arrives more tightly packed.

Blackthorn blossom, bluebell growth, leaf burst, insect emergence — not just shifted forward, but compressed into a shorter window.

#Phenology #SeasonalChange #WildClocks

First #WildClocks comparison with 2025. Same place, same week - one year apart. Temperatures broadly similar. Rainfall far higher this winter. The #bluebells are already well ahead. A reminder that seasons respond to rainfall as much as warmth.

#Phenology #SeasonalChange

tinyurl.com/vmz3p3n6

To understand the impact of biological clocks, you have to study them in the wild. Theme issue of world's oldest scientific journal on #wildclocks featuring #NIOO and other Dutch researchers: https://nioo.knaw.nl/en/press/importance-biological-clock-can-only-be-seen-wild

We often think of leaf fall as the beginning of autumn.

But what happens when leaves fall because a woodland is trying to survive a summer of intense heat?

Yesterday's woodland floor looked more like October than August.

#WildClocks #ClimateAndNature

The question isn't whether these landscapes become warmer.

It's whether they eventually become something altogether different.

#WildClocks #ClimateAndNature #Phenology

Om de impact van biologische klokken te begrijpen moet je ze in het wild bestuderen. Nederlandse onderzoekers van o.a. #NIOO in themanummer #wildclocks van oudste wetenschappelijk tijdschrift: https://nioo.knaw.nl/nl/pers/belang-van-biologische-klok-zie-je-pas-echt-het-wild

Cabilla Wood yesterday.

Ancient trees, mossy banks, fast-moving water — and beyond them, a new woodland being planted.

Different timescales, side by side.

#Rewilding #TemperateWoodland #WoodlandCreation #WildClocks

In woodlands and chalk grasslands, different ecological ‘clocks’ - flowering, leafing, emergence - usually stay loosely in step.

If the climate becomes less stable, those clocks may begin to drift.

Not all at once. But enough to change how the landscape feels.

#ClimateAndNature #WildClocks

We often imagine time as a single line moving forward. But watch a woodland closely and it starts to feel thicker than that.

Woodland time isn't one clock. It's dozens.

The bluebell clock.
The oak leaf clock.
The fungal clock.
The insect clock.

All unfolding together.

#WildClocks

With their thin soils and moisture-sensitive vegetation, #ChalkGrasslands don’t just reflect the seasons - they amplify them.

It makes them the ideal sentinel landscape - showing not just seasonal changes, but wider environmental trends.

#Phenology #ClimateAndNature #WildClocks

For millennia, #ChalkGrassland like Uffington, Barbary Castle and Old Sarum have commanded wide views across the landscape.

They were the sentinels of ancient Britain.

Today they may be playing a similar role again - quietly revealing how the climate itself is changing.

#WildClocks #UKNature

What happens to a landscape if sheep farming is put out to graze?

This piece explores what might replace it - and why plant diversity could be one of the big winners, if farmers take an active role in restoring it.

#WildClocks #SeasonalChange #UKNature

tinyurl.com/yzf5fefa

Watching the seasons over time can feel similar.

The landscape is the wood - complex, shifting, full of signals.

The patterns we notice are the paths we begin to trace through it. Not fixed. Not fully knowable. But gradually revealing where change might be leading.

#WildClocks #SeasonalChange

How linear is time? Is there more flexibility in the seasons than a clock suggests? In Māori thinking, seasonal change isn't a straight line but an unfolding - a process of revealing rather than meeting fixed thresholds.

tinyurl.com/2j62aaw4

#Phenology #SeasonalChange #NatureAndTime #WildClocks

(5/5)
We’ve hoarded time, colonized it, broken it.
But we can still relearn its rhythm.
Not with clocks, but with ceremony. With kinship. With care.

⏳🌿 Let the wild clocks guide us.
#WildClocks #KinshipTime #EcologicalGrief #Hope #Grief #Bluesky #CaliforniaGriefCenter #ClimateHealing