As we head into the last week of April the Cranefly hatch reports are beginning to come in.
It feels early still (See blog here that I wrote but forgot to post!! from Early April) but we're seemingly behind 2019 and 2020. 2022 was a cold slow Spring and never really produced a peak hatch.
The reported sightings are currently fairly low and I believe that's down to temperatures. I suspect when we see a high temperature wave of around 20c in the Spring the Marsh cranefly is triggered into its pupae and hatch phase.
We saw it in 2019 and 2020 but 2021 didn't deliver those temperatures until well into June and although we've seen some pleasant weather we have seen nothing approaching 20c yet in 2022 and the current forecast is predicting a downturn in temperature.
The below graphs show a rolling 5 day daily maximum temperature in Birmingham.
If the temperatures do pick up after the forecasted colder spell it'll be interesting to see if that triggers a flush in hatches. The worry is we go through another cold May like we did in 2021 where its warm enough for any leatherjackets to feed but not warm enough for the turf to recover.
Fingers crossed for a warm May.
