It says in today's Chronicle ...

In her "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" entry for February the 3rd, Edith Holden states:

It says in today's Chronicle that at Dover a Blackbird's nest with two eggs have been found at Edenbridge, a Hedge-sparrow's with four eggs and at Elmstead, a robin's with five eggs.

The beginning of 2016 too has been extremely mild. Although, like Edith, I read about unseasonable animal behaviour in the newspaper, I got much more immediate information through BBC Winterwatch and Twitter, especially Winterwatch's #WeirdWinter theme.  All sorts of people reported untimely wildlife behaviour including January swallow sightings and young grebes on the Thames. Earlier in the month, I was one of hundreds people who took part in the BSBI's New Year's Plant Hunt and (in Sussex) found Hawthorn and Cowslips in flower - both of these should be out in May.

January cowslip (Sussex)

While I was looking for flowers, my mobile phone and Twitter enabled me to share photos with many of my fellow plant hunters, instantly.  Back in 1906, Edith, her friends and neighbours would have shared information via face-to-face conversations, letters and parcels. Telephones were available but calls were costly. So while she could write down her observations in a diary and provide illustrations for magazines, it would be 70 years before her diary got the audience it deserved.

Easy mass communication has made crowd-sourced citizen science projects commonplace. Over the last weekend of January, the RSPB ran the #BigGardenBirdWatch. About half-a-million people count the birds that land in their gardens over the course of one hour. The RSPB then collects all this information and compares it to previous years.    As well as doing my own bird count, in Sussex, I have been able to follow others' sightings via Twitter. 

My #BigGardenBirdWatch notes (Sussex)

I think that, as someone with a keen interest in nature, Edith would have enjoyed taking part in the #BigGardenBirdwatch. As a teacher, she wrote her diary as a model for her pupils to follow. Perhaps if she were living and working today, she would  have followed the RSPB's advice to devote a lesson to observing the birds.