Climate blues: You do not have to go far to witness the effects of climate change on our wildlife; in fact many of us have built-in sensitivity to them. Birch trees — whose pollen is an important cause of hay fever are flowering five-to-ten days earlier each decade. Atchoo!

Those of us who do not get hay fever can see the effects of climate change in our own backyards. Take the little egret stalking the chalk stream on the Trust’s Letcombe Brook nature reserve near Wantage, hunting for amphibians, fish and insects.

The little egret is the catwalk model cousin to our British grey heron and has moved north from Africa and the Mediterranean.

The species first dipped its big ‘Looney Tunes’ yellow feet in the estuaries, streams and rivers of the south coast in the late 1980s. Now it breeds and winters here. And you are just as likely to see this white bird in Blackbird Leys on the brook near the Kassam Stadium. Sadly, climate change will not just bring new species to Oxfordshire, it will banish others. The shallow-rooted beech woodlands on the Trust’s Warburg nature reserve in the Chilterns are more vulnerable to the hotter, dryer summers predicted by our scientists.

Nature’s clock: Thousands of hours of survey time have been clocked up over decades by scientists studying the relationships between species and climate.

In Oxfordshire, ecologist and famous author of British wildlife field guides, Richard Fitter, (a founding member of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust), spent 50 years studying the first flowering dates of hundreds of species!

This herculean effort revealed one of the strongest biological signals of climate change: the majority of species now flower five days earlier and a significant number 15 days earlier.

Relationships between species are important too. Oak trees are coming into leaf sooner and the caterpillars that feed on them now hatch earlier.

But, our backyard bird table favourite, the acrobatic great tit, feeds on these caterpillars and hasn’t adapted so well.

Tit chicks are complex little things and take a long time growing. By the time they hatch, the world has moved on: the caterpillars have become moths and the chicks will struggle. Action starts with us: Every product uses energy in its making and has its climate-cost, so we can all do our bit to help lessen climate change and its impacts on our wildlife by using less power and fewer resources.

At the wildlife trust we do this, but we are also working to rebuild the network of natural habitats in our landscape: restoring ecological links destroyed by unsustainable modern agriculture, transport and development.

Recreating a living landscape with space for people and nature will help much of our wildlife to adapt to climate change.

It will also help make space for new species like our friend the little egret. Action for this starts with us all, and it starts in our own backyard.

To take part in a Climate Week event go to www.climateweek.com. For details about wildlife trust nature reserves, volunteering and activities, or about joining the trust, visit www.bbowt.org.uk or call 01865 775476.