“The arrival and departure times of migratory birds are vital to understanding what weather lies ahead. An early warning system of sorts, we have seen in previous years that birds – from hobbies to swallows – depart before the end of August. This tells us that summer is over and that we won’t see any more hot weather.

“But we can also use our feathered friends to forecast what lies ahead at the beginning of summer. This year, even though the migratory birds have already arrived from Africa, they are not yet nesting – which tells us that our seasonal cycle is delayed this year, and we will see a later summer. The house martins have not yet begun to gather mud for their nests, and while the blackbirds and the tits have built nests, they have not yet started to have families – as there are not enough insects.

“We can predict the weather from the number of broods these birds have, and this year it would appear that the birds will only have one rather than the usual two – signifying a worse summer than usual.”

How high the flowers grow will tell us how much rain we are to get