Steel ice Winter weather

If legend is correct - we are in for a very long, bitter and harsh Winter as the environmental barometer of the ‘steel ice weather’ period, the Bewick’s swan has migrated from Siberia to our English shores more than three weeks earlier than normal this year. This small, delicate sweet swan flew some 2,500 miles and landed in the Midlands region bringing with it blasts of Arctic air which has brought us our first frosts. In folklore, the earlier that the Bewick’s swan arrives on our shores predicts both the Winter extension and the overall biting harshness of the season’s weather …

   Bewick’s swan

The Bewick’s swan is similar to the Whooper swan in features apart from the overall size – the Bewick’s being only 115 to a possible 125 centimetres from bill to tail. The other main feature being the beak. Both birds have long triangular yellow and black bills but the Bewick’s bill has black creeping  upwards over the nostrils whilst the Whooper has yellow creeping downwards, the nostrils in this larger bird therefore present themselves surrounded in the yellow portion of their beaks.