Environment

False Spring

With Britain experiencing some of its warmest late-February weather on record, naturalists are concerned for the early-emerging species.

Birds across the U.K. are already nesting and mating, with some arriving more than a month early.

But with the prediction of more typical late-winter weather in March, Tony Whitehead of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says early-arriving swallows are taking a big risk to get good nesting sites.

Other naturalists say that flowers, insects and reptiles that have emerged early from winter could be in peril if a sudden chill arrives.