How Suds can stop the floods Much of the massive flooding of 2007 - described as Britain's greatest ever civil emergency - was caused by just such factors. In Hull, for example, a month's rain falling in 24 hours overwhelmed even a relatively modern drainage system, flooding 7,200 homes and 1,300 businesses. Even when the sewers do cope, increased flow causes rivers to break their banks and raw sewage to surge out of some 14,000 storm overflows in England alone. So attention is increasingly returning to measures that mimic the natural processes: reducing the amount of water reaching the man-made systems. Boringly entitled "sustainable drainage systems" (but more attractively acronymed as Suds) slow the flow, store it and encourage it to seep into the ground. Suds include "green" roofs planted with vegetation, permeable paving allowing water through to the soil below, grassland depressions called swales that carry water off into ponds, and even garden water butts. Typically they cost less than half as much as traditional drainage systems and far less than the flood defences erected to safeguard communities, essential though both continue to be. And they can improve areas and property values by encouraging wildlife and adorning landscapes. Financial incentives drove up numbers of green roofs in Germany 19-fold in just 12 years. In Melbourne, Australia, a five-year scheme is establishing 10,000 "raingardens" - flower and vegetable beds underlain with sandy soil to help water filter away. The Augustenborg suburb of Malmö, Sweden, has been relieved of regular flooding by a network of green roofs, swales, ponds and mini-wetlands. Several cities in America, including Portland and Philadelphia, have established similar natural infrastructure, while the city of Aurora in Colorado so reduced run-off that it avoided building a costly new plant for treating waste water. There are some good Suds in Britain: a nature reserve near Doncaster, for example, absorbed 200,000 cubic metres of floodwater in 2007, saving thousands of homes from inundation. But they have not spread widely, for the lack of legislation. In 2008, new rules meant that planning permission was required to lay impermeable paving in front gardens. But the big breakthrough for England and Wales was supposed to have been offered by the 2010 Flood and Water Management Act, which, among other things, allows new developments connection to drainage systems only once they have been passed by a body overseeing Suds. Nearly four years on, that provision has yet to be brought into force. Ministers first pledged - and failed - to do so by October 2012, then by April last year. Their most recent target is April this year. A Commons committee has repeatedly registered its "great concern" and "dismay" at the delay, but to no avail. And even when it does come into effect, it will only tackle a tiny part of the problem, since it will address only new developments, which make up less than one per cent of the built estate. Surely, as a nation, we should be good at coping with rain? But familiarity seems to have bred complacency. The consequences, you might say, are flooding in. A bird's-eye view affects the early worm catch We all know the early bird catches the worm, but which bird is the earliest? Thousands of people across Britain are getting up early on Thursday to find out. Ten years ago, a similar exercise, organised by the British Trust for Ornithology, found that blackbirds get to feeders first, turning up just after first light, with robins hard on their heels, blue tits third, and song thrush and dunnocks fourth and fifth. It is all down, apparently, to what a bird's eye can view. Research showed that the earliest birds have proportionally the biggest eyes, capturing more of the scarce light, and allowing them to, er, wing it earlier. The 5,800 volunteers in 2004 also discovered that urban birds like to lie in, bestirring themselves later than their country cousins. Heat leaking out of all those buildings generally warms up towns and cities by a few degrees: it's thought that the birds lose less energy keeping warm overnight, and don't need to refuel so rapidly. Artificial lighting may also be having an effect. So that's some extra information the trust is hoping to worm out of Thursday's early birds. Worth getting out of bed for? The icing on the climate cake How good to start the year with a chuckle. The travails of the Antarctic expedition that got stuck in ice in the midst of the southern summer while investigating the effects of global warming have certainly - as the great political commentator Alan Watkins used to say - added to the gaiety of nations. No one, naturally, has laughed more loudly than sceptics who say the incident shows that the climate change is not taking place. And it is true that, while sea ice has shrunk dramatically in the Arctic in recent years, it has grown to record levels in the Antarctic. But, counter-intuitively, this too seems to suggest that the world is heating up. Scientists blame accelerating melting of the ice on the land of the frozen continent, which is now, on balance, losing about 70 billion tons of the stuff each year. The cold meltwater flows into the sea, freshening it and interfering with its circulation, making it harder for warmer water to well up from below as in the past. So the surface temperature drops, and more ice forms. Which all goes to show, no doubt, that even the heated subject of global warming can, at times, be surprisingly cool.