Wild Hares and Hummingbirds

by Stephen Moss

  They are created from a range of woody and thorny plants, including hawthorn, blackthorn, bramble and dog rose, and together they form a dense and impenetrable barrier dividing the fields, or between fields and lanes. Along with the rhynes and droves, they are the most typical feature of the parish landscape, and also one that is vitally important for wildlife.

  For a few weeks at this time of year, the hedgerows are lined with a narrow strip of white: cow parsley, also known, rather more poetically, as Queen Anne’s lace. This is surely the most familiar plant of rural Britain; there can hardly be a lane, road, or carriageway in the countryside where these tall, rangy plants cannot be seen during May and June.

  In his delightfully quirky botanical history, An Englishman’s Flora, Geoffrey Grigson lists more than fifty different local names for this familiar plant, many of which refer to its use as a food for livestock, including sheep as well as cows. Others, such as ‘devil’s parsley’, are more sinister, and are probably a result of confusing this plant with its similar but deadly poisonous relative, hemlock.

  Take a closer look at cow parsley, and in the centre of each tightly packed cluster of tiny white flowers you will see half a dozen or more tiny flies, which will help to pollinate the plant and continue its domination of our country lanes. But in the past few years, the cow parsley has had to compete with a brash, colourful newcomer. Tall green stems, each topped with a cluster of vivid yellow flowers, have sprung up everywhere. In some of the village lanes they threaten to overwhelm the incumbent plants, so complete is their dominance.

  They have an unfair advantage; for this is no native hedgerow flower, but oil-seed rape. It is the product of agricultural policies that for many years have subsidised food production, with little or no thought for the consequences to the wider countryside and its wildlife. Agricultural plants have always escaped their field boundaries and cropped up elsewhere, and odd stems of wheat, barley and oats are a common sight throughout Britain. But there is something more sinister about rape: for true to its name, it doesn’t just mix with the native wildflowers, but overwhelms them. The vibrant colour draws attention to itself like a footballer’s wife in the royal enclosure at Ascot: the yellow is somehow unnatural, its electric brightness making it look as if it were created in a laboratory rather than in a field.

  Rape has a long history as a cultivated plant. A member of the Brassica family, which includes cabbages, cauliflowers and turnips, it was grown for its oil in civilisations around the Mediterranean at least 3,000 years ago. It probably came to Britain with Bronze Age settlers; if not, the Romans certainly brought it here as a fuel for lighting. Having fallen out of fashion when we began to exploit fossil fuels, rape staged a major comeback in the latter part of the twentieth century, as a source of animal feed. Soon afterwards, those characteristic patches of bright yellow began to appear all over our countryside. It is still relatively scarce in these parts, where arable crops are rarely grown; but there is enough to produce these feral escapees, which dominate our waysides for a few weeks each May.

  FROM ONE RAMPAGING alien plant, to a sadly declining native bird: the nightingale. The nightingale is a paradox. No other British bird has been so celebrated in verse and folklore, yet is so seldom seen. No other bird has such an extraordinary song, yet is so dull in appearance. And no other bird captures our imagination quite like this small, brown relative of the robin. Which given how scarce and elusive it is, might at first seem rather odd; until, that is, you witness the nightingale’s performance for yourself.

  Since moving to Somerset I have not had that pleasure, so on a fine May evening I decide to put things right. I head a few miles south of the parish, to the RSPB’s West Sedgemoor reserve. Before the main event, I take a brief stroll, and finally catch up with another elusive bird: the cuckoo. For a few minutes, as the sun sets, I enjoy the spectacle of a trio of cuckoos, with one male chasing a female from bush to bush, as another calls in the distance.

  By now I am ready to hear the solo performance of the nightingale. The song arrives out of nowhere, just as I am wandering back towards the car park, alongside a dense row of hawthorns. Two or three notes are all it takes for me to realise the identity of the songster. After tuning up, he delivers the full version: an unstoppable flood of deep, rich tones, interspersed with bizarre, mechanical sounds, which blend together to create this unique and unmistakable song.

  Many have tried to describe the song of the nightingale; few have succeeded. But the novelist H. E. Bates certainly comes close:

  It has some kind of electric, suspended quality that

  has a far deeper beauty than the most passionate of

  its sweetness. It is a performance made up, very often,

  more of silence than of utterance …

  ‘More of silence than of utterance …’ – the Harold Pinter of the bird world, perhaps. The popular songwriter Eric Maschwitz also celebrated the bird in the lyrics of his famous wartime song ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. And it is impossible to ignore the best-known poem about this species – perhaps about any British bird – John Keats’s famous ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

  But what about the subject of all this poetic attention – what exactly is a nightingale? The answer is something of an anticlimax. For the nightingale is just one of more than two hundred members of a family which includes the familiar robin, and various kinds of chats and flycatchers. Unlike its more colourful relations, such as the redstart, wheatear and bluethroat, it is essentially dull rufous-brown above, and paler beneath, with a reddish tinge to its tail.

  So there can be little doubt that it is the nightingale’s song, and especially its habit of singing through the night, which marks it out from its fellow songsters. Other birds also sing after dark – nocturnal robins often compete with nightingales – but nightingales do so with a persistence which makes their rivals appear half-hearted.

  This may have something to do with the very brief period during which they sing; just a few weeks, from their arrival in April until the middle of June, when they fall silent. To make the most of this crucial time, nightingales have evolved the ability to sing throughout the night in a kind of ‘arms race’ between rival males. The birds with the most complex and persistent song are the most successful at attracting a mate, and so pass on their musical ability and singing stamina to future generations.

  Sadly, this is a sound heard less and less often, both here and in the rest of Britain. We might expect a bird like the nightingale, on the north-western edge of its European range, to be doing rather well as a result of climate change. But in fact the species is in decline here, partly because of the destruction of its dense, scrubby habitat by an introduced, alien species, the muntjac deer.

  Like the cuckoos I saw earlier, and other declining migrants such as the turtle dove and spotted flycatcher, the nightingale may also be suffering the consequences of changes in weather patterns in West Africa, where it spends the winter. Whatever the reasons, nightingale numbers have dropped by more than 90 per cent in my lifetime.

  Despite their decline, nightingales can still be heard on fine spring evenings south and east of a line from the Severn to the Humber. It is an experience well worth having – for no amount of reading about this bird and its extraordinary song can prepare you for actually hearing it.

  As I stand in the gloaming of a May evening, deep in the heart of rural Somerset, listening to the nightingale’s song, I recall lines written by John Clare, almost two hundred years ago:

  And still unseen, sings sweet – the ploughman feels

  The thrilling music, as he goes along,

  And imitates and listens – while the fields

  Lose all their paths in dusk, to lead him wrong

  Still sings the nightingale her sweet melodious song.

  For a few moments, I am able to immerse myself in this most complex and extraordinary sound. Then I walk back to the car park, and take the short drive home, the bird’s sweet, melodious song stil
l echoing in my mind.

  I RETURN HOME from work one evening to find a surprise in store: a jam jar containing a sleek, bronzed reptile; a slow-worm. This particular individual was discovered by my father-in-law Mike, on his driveway in Wedmore, a few miles to the east. Fortunately he spotted it before he got into his car, otherwise the Mini’s tyres might have turned the slow-worm into a flat worm.

  The children are agog with excitement, each wanting to take a turn holding the creature. I am impressed that they do so without fear, though when the animal begins to move George decides he has had enough. Daisy and Charlie, though, grasp it firmly but tenderly, heeding my warnings not to grip too tight. For like other lizards the slow-worm will, as a last resort, jettison its tail in order to escape being caught and eaten by a predator.

  Neither slow nor indeed worms, slow-worms are beautiful creatures, and this one is no exception: a burnished bronze in colour; its firm, smooth skin marked with stripes along the length of the body. The young – which look rather like baby eels – are burnished gold, with a darker stripe along their spine.

  With such large and noticeable eyes, it is surprising that this creature is sometimes known as the ‘blind worm’. ‘Slow-worm’ seems equally inappropriate, and it actually derives from the Old English meaning ‘slay worm’, and refers to the creature’s liking for earthworms. The slow-worm’s scientific name, Anguis fragilis, literally means ‘fragile snake’. But when a slow-worm blinks it reveals its true identity: snakes do not have eyelids, lizards do. The ‘fragile’ element derives from the aforementioned ability to protect itself against predators by losing its tail.

  Another noticeable thing about slow-worms is their extraordinary longevity. They can survive for up to thirty years, rivalling the Komodo dragon as the world’s longest lived lizard. But unlike the mighty dragon, which can reach a length of 10 feet or more, slow-worms rarely grow longer than 18 inches.

  They are the most common of Britain’s six species of reptile, with more than three-quarters of a million of them slithering around our grassy banks, hedgerows and gardens, so we might expect to see slow-worms more often than we do. But with so many hungry predators around, from birds to domestic cats, it pays to keep a low profile.

  After taking a final look at our slow-worm, we decide to release it in a sunny spot next to our greenhouse, where long grass and brambles should provide protection and sanctuary. Like the field voles we trapped and released here a few weeks ago, it melts rapidly into cover, and away from our sight.

  ON A CLEAR day, looking due north of the village church, you can see the characteristic shape of Crook Peak. At almost 700 feet above sea level, this is one of the highest points on the Mendips, and the highest for some distance around. It is a well-known landmark, not least because it hoves into view as you head south along the M5 from Bristol to Exeter, marking the entrance to the county of Somerset. For me, it also marks the important dividing line between the West Country and the rest of Britain.

  In our household, Crook Peak is always known as ‘Charlie’s mountain’, the name given to it by our son when he first saw it from our garden a few summers ago. Now that he and the others are old enough, we regularly take a walk up to the top of the hill, to enjoy the view. We have climbed up here in the dead of winter, on a breezy autumn day, and in early spring, and it has always been windy. But today, on a fine day towards the end of May, the wind has finally dropped, and we are able to enjoy the peak in uncharacteristically warm sunshine.

  From the car park there are two main routes up Crook Peak: one a casual stroll along a muddy path through woods; the other a mad scramble up the steep scarp slope, followed by a swift hike up the main ridge. We choose the latter, and as soon as we begin our climb we are confronted with a profusion of late-spring butterflies.

  There are common blues, fluttering from place to place on delicate sapphire wings; small heaths, bleached pale in the afternoon sun; and a single grizzled skipper, a tiny, grey-and-white butterfly easily mistaken for a day-flying moth. A movement catches my eye in the blue sky above: a male kestrel, hovering on stiff wings; and just behind, a pair of ravens tumbling through the air. I briefly get excited about a closer, bright red object; but this turns out to be a model glider.

  We trudge onwards and upwards, as mountain bikers race past us down the slope. Reaching the rocky cairn at the top, we are rewarded by looking down on a magnificent landscape, only slightly marred by the motorway traffic snaking past beneath us. To the west, the Bristol Channel; to the south-west, Brent Knoll, the Polden and Quantock Hills; and further still, towards the horizon, the ridge of Exmoor, just visible through the heat-haze.

  To the east, along the Mendip ridge, I can see Cheddar Gorge and, beneath it, Cheddar Reservoir gleaming in the sunshine. Further south, the church at Wedmore, and behind it the unmistakable outline of Glastonbury Tor. And immediately ahead of us, I can just make out the familiar shape of the church tower in my own parish, and the roof of our home; the first time I have seen it so clearly from here. A real-life geography lesson for the children.

  Buoyed by the sight and the fine weather, we walk down the other side, accompanied by the clamour of stonechats, their call just like the sound of two pebbles being knocked together. Lower down, we pass through a scrubby wood where brimstone butterflies flutter in the glades: butter-yellow males, and a female, pale green below, so that when she closes her wings she resembles a fresh leaf. Eventually we emerge onto the lane, and walk past banks covered with bird’s-foot trefoil back to the car park, where a welcome drink of lukewarm water awaits us. I wonder, briefly, what Crook Peak must have been like when it snowed – a tobogganist’s paradise, no doubt.

  JUNE

  THE ODD CHOICES made by birds, when they look for a place to nest, never fail to amaze me. As well as the blackbirds and blue tits in our workshop, we now have great tits in our mailbox. Well, not our mailbox, to be exact, but the one belonging to our neighbours Dawn and Marc, directly opposite our side gate.

  I discover this when our postwoman, Val, knocks on the door. Val has covered this delivery route for over forty years, and it takes a lot to surprise her, but even she is, for once, lost for words. I gingerly lift the lid of the plywood box. Even before I have opened it, I can hear the hissing sound of the adult bird inside, incubating a clutch of eggs. Sure enough, as daylight illuminates the interior, I can see a beady black eye looking up at me.

  ‘Great tits,’ I pronounce, to Val’s evident delight. The birds are incubating half a dozen tiny eggs, little pale ovals spotted with reddish-brown, each barely the size of my fingernail. Val carefully writes out a warning to anyone else who might have the temerity to deliver mail here, tapes it neatly to the side of the box, and continues with her round.

  Close up, the nest is a wonderfully intricate concoction of moss and grass, the cup carefully lined with sheep’s wool, collected from the next-door field. The incubating female really is a thing of beauty: the rich tones of her green-and-yellow plumage contrasting with her black head, snow-white cheeks and broad black stripe down the centre of her breast.

  This choice of nesting place might seem unusual to us, but from a bird’s point of view, the mailbox is the ideal location. It provides a roomy, wooden home, facing east (so avoiding the sun during the afternoon, when it is at its strongest), and a neat slit at the front, wide enough for the adults to gain entry, but too narrow for a predator.

  A week or so later I check the box again, and to my delight five tiny beaks immediately point skywards, begging instinctively for food. The chicks can hardly be more than a day or two old. Now, for the parents, the real hard work begins. Every single day for the next couple of weeks, they must bring back up to a thousand moth caterpillars, to satisfy their hungry brood. So during every hour of daylight they must each find more than thirty caterpillars: roughly one every two minutes. It is an astonishing statistic; even more so when you consider that the adult birds also need to feed themselves. No wonder they look so tatty and exhausted b
y the time the chicks eventually fledge and leave the nest.

  By now, in early June, the breeding season is in full swing, not just here in the parish but throughout the country. The birds in the mailbox are just one of a couple of million pairs of great tits breeding in Britain. Each pair lays between seven and nine eggs, and some have a second brood, so upwards of twenty million eggs are laid each year, producing between ten and fifteen million fledged youngsters. That’s an awful lot of caterpillars – more than a billion in all – just for this one species.

  Considering that there are around 120 million pairs, of well over 200 different species of bird, breeding in Britain, each of which needs to feed one or more broods of young, the sheer scale of this annual event is astonishing.

  In this parish alone there are thousands of pairs of breeding birds, of at least fifty different species; all the more reason why each of us should safeguard our own little corner of the countryside.

  A SPELL OF warm, sunny weather early this month means that along the lanes, every hedgerow, bush and tree looks as if it is about to burst; and as I stare intently at one hawthorn I can almost see the foliage growing outwards by the minute. Surely, if this fine weather continues, the trunks, branches and twigs will be unable to contain the green force within, and will simply explode.

  On a warm, muggy evening, the volcano-like silhouette of Brent Knoll is bathed in yellow sunshine as it pokes through horizontal fingers of cloud. Opposite, towards Glastonbury Tor, a thick layer of grey fills half the sky, its folds and pleats as untidy as a teenager’s duvet. A broad, squat section of rainbow is just visible in the gap between the cloud base and the distant Mendip Hills, its layered bands of colour illuminating the sky.

  All around the village, thrushes and blackbirds continue to sing their evening song. Do they never tire of hearing those same notes and phrases, repeated hour after hour, day after day, during the breeding season? I do another quick calculation: if a thrush sings twenty distinct phrases a minute, for six or seven hours a day (and many carry on for far longer), then during the four months of the breeding season it will have sung close to 1 million times. I do hope the females are impressed.