by Stephen Moss
It is an elephant hawkmoth, so named not because it resembles an elephant, which it doesn’t, but because its larva does. About 3 inches long, the caterpillar sports a proboscis like an elephant’s trunk, which it waves at its enemies to confuse and frighten them. Sadly these, and other large and noticeable hawkmoth caterpillars, are often killed by fearful householders, who remain ignorant of the beauty that lies within, ready to emerge once the creature has pupated.
I allow this stunning vision to crawl onto my hand, where it pauses for a moment, before heading off low across the garden on whirring wings. It is seeking out a clump of fuchsias, where it will hang for the rest of the day, its gaudy colours the perfect camouflage against this flamboyant flower. Then, along with the hundred or so moths I have released, and the many millions I failed to catch, it will emerge at dusk, to patrol the lanes, gardens and flower beds of the parish until dawn breaks once again.
MOST YEARS, SOMETIME between late April and the middle of June, the weather systems above the British Isles shuffle around the skies to create the pattern we are all hoping for: a building ridge of high pressure, bringing southerly breezes, warm air and clear skies.
In the early afternoons, the temperatures push into the low 20s, though with cloudless skies at night it can still be quite chilly at dawn. In the evenings, though, a residue of the day’s heat still remains. So as the evening star, the planet Venus, rises in the darkening sky over Mill Batch Farm, there is just enough warmth to bring the moths out to feed, and with them, their predators: pipistrelle bats.
Our smallest bat, and by weight our smallest mammal, the pipistrelle is a wonder. Barely the length of my thumb-joint, and weighing less than a sixth of an ounce – about the same as a two-pence coin – this is the bat we usually catch a glimpse of on spring and summer evenings, fluttering in the gloaming as it hunts down flying insects. Found throughout the UK, it can be seen in suburbs, towns and gardens, as well as rural areas such as our parish.
Pipistrelles are something of a paradox: they are common, and yet, like all our bat species, can be very hard to see. In early spring, about two million individuals emerge from their winter hibernation in trees and buildings, to flutter across our evening skies. But sadly, there aren’t as many as there used to be. Just as many insect-eating birds have declined in the past few decades, so these tiny bats have also seen a fall in numbers. It’s the old, familiar story: a combination of the overuse of agricultural chemicals, habitat loss and, just like garden birds, the hunting skills of that ubiquitous but alien creature, the domestic cat.
The pipistrelle may be familiar, but this modest, often overlooked little animal has an amazing story to tell. Its secret – perhaps I should say their secret – was revealed a few years ago, thanks to Britain’s growing army of bat watchers.
Bats locate their prey in darkness by using a technique called ‘echolocation’: emitting a series of high-pitched sounds, mostly too high for our ears to hear, which ‘bounce off’ flying objects such as moths, and enable the bat to home in on its quarry. So we need to use handy little machines called bat detectors, which can transform these inaudible sounds into a series of clicks we are then able to hear. By adjusting a dial on the detector, we can read the frequency of an individual bat, and thus attempt to assign it to a particular species.
I venture outside at dusk, a permanent shushing sound emanating from the little box of knobs and dials I am carrying. Conveniently, the bat detector has a luminous screen and digital display, with a scale ranging from 16 to 120 kilohertz. So far, however, I have failed to detect anything at all. This is partly due to my inexperience with the device, and partly because to use it successfully, I have to guess which bat I might be ‘hearing’, and set the dial accordingly.
To my inexpert eyes, it looks like a good evening for bats. An hour ago, the sun finally set over the farmyard, and the last swallows dropped down into the barn to seek refuge for the night. In the gloaming I can just make out a thick deposit of soft manure, left by the cattle. This is, I hope, attracting hordes of invisible flying insects: bat food.
And then I see my first bat, fluttering and swerving in the paler sky above the gable end of the barn. It swoops down, past the telegraph wires where the swallows sit by day, whizzes past my head, through the narrow gap between the young elm trees, and out of the yard. To me this looks like a miracle, but for an echolocating bat it is all in a night’s work.
So which species is it? It is small, which means it’s most likely to be a common pipistrelle. I set the dial to 45 kilohertz – the frequency at which this particular bat normally echolocates – but the device fails to respond. Have I not turned up the volume? Is there a connector missing? I turn the dial backwards and forwards, but still nothing. Meanwhile the bat is obviously hunting, and catching, moths, and presumably using echolocation to do so. Then I have a flash of inspiration. I carefully turn the dial up the scale … 46 … 48 … 50 … 52 … 53 … 54 … 55 … and bingo! Clear as day, through the magic machine, I hear a series of rapid, rhythmic clicks, a dozen or so in all.
I have just re-enacted one of the most extraordinary events in British natural history: the discovery of the soprano pipistrelle. Back in the last year of the old millennium, bat experts noticed something unusual when they were observing pipistrelles. Some of the bats they ‘heard’ with their detectors were echolocating at 45 kilohertz, but others were doing so at a higher frequency: 55 kilohertz.
When they took a closer look at the behaviour of both groups of bats, they discovered, to their astonishment, that these led separate lives, with slightly different food and habitat needs. This was enough to formally ‘split’ one pipistrelle species into two new ones: the common pipistrelle and the soprano pipistrelle.
This may sound like something only of interest to bat enthusiasts, but nothing could be further from the truth. The discovery of what is known as a ‘cryptic species’ brings the tantalising possibility that there might be dozens more of these hidden creatures out there. Could there possibly be two different species of house sparrows, blue tits, foxes, or rabbits, living alongside each other, undetected by us, but definitely leading separate lives? The discovery revealed just how little we know about some of the wild creatures we take for granted and how much more there might be to discover. In a nation where we pride ourselves on knowing almost everything about our native wildlife, this is an exciting, and rather humbling, thought.
Delighted to have discovered this creature for myself, I watch as the soprano pipistrelle performs like the opera singer after whom it is named. It flies around my head, clicking as it goes, swerving in figures of eight through the sky, and grabbing unsuspecting moths out of the darkness. And thanks to the miracle machine in my hand, I can momentarily enter its mysterious nocturnal world.
THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, but especially in May and June, our dense hedgerows and reedbeds are home to a bird that most of the village’s residents ignore, probably because it looks a bit like a house sparrow. Or rather the female does: though a closer look does reveal a rich, chestnut tone to her plumage, with greyer underparts, and fine streaks on her head and face. If you thought you might be looking at something different from a common or garden sparrow, a glimpse of the male would confirm your suspicions. For the male reed bunting is a splendid-looking bird, sporting a jet-black head and face, snow-white collar, and white ‘moustaches’ on either side of his bill.
Like so many farmland birds, reed buntings have suffered major declines during my lifetime, although a cycle ride around the lanes of the parish might make you think otherwise. Reed buntings are everywhere: in winter they gather in loose flocks, flitting among the thick hedgerows in search of food; and now, in summer, they have moved to the small patches of reeds along the rhynes. Here, from April to August, the males sing their curiously unassuming song, which always sounds to me rather like a bored sound engineer: ‘one … two … one … two … testing … testing’.
But although reed buntings have made something of
a comeback, the same cannot be said for three of their close relatives: the yellowhammer, corn and cirl buntings. All three species have declined in numbers and contracted in range since the Second World War, and although yellowhammers can still be found in the more arable parts of Somerset, corn buntings have disappeared from the county, with just a single record in the past couple of winters. If we wanted an emblem of what has gone wrong in the British countryside, we need look no further than the fate of the corn bunting: a bird our ancestors would have taken for granted, but which we have allowed to vanish from much of the rural scene.
The decline of the cirl bunting has been even more precipitous; indeed at one point it looked as if this attractive little seed-eater might go extinct as a British bird. When I was a boy the cirl bunting could be found widely, though locally, across southern England. But from the 1980s onwards its range retreated rapidly towards the south-west, so that today it is virtually confined to a narrow coastal strip of south Devon. There, thanks to the work of the RSPB and local farmers, its fortunes have finally turned a corner. This would have pleased one of my ornithological heroes, George Montagu, who two centuries ago first discovered cirl buntings in Britain, in the small, tightly hedged fields around his south Devon home.
Could the cirl bunting ever make a comeback, and return to breed here in Somerset? Left to its own devices, probably not: this is a stay-at-home bird, rarely travelling more than a mile or two in the whole of its lifetime. So it needs a helping hand. Given that they have already been successfully reintroduced into Cornwall, perhaps Somerset could be the next place to release them; en route to repopulating the rest of southern England with this modest but attractive little bird.
BY THE MIDDLE of the month, the vegetation in the meadow at the bottom of our garden is reaching triffid-like proportions. On warm, sunny mornings, as rafts of cumulo-nimbus clouds rise into the bright blue sky, clumps of hogweed are awash with insects, large and small.
Hogweed is one of the great unsung heroes of the British summer. Taller than a grown man, its broad, flat, creamy-white flower-heads are supported on robust stalks as thick as my fingers. As the name suggests, hogweed was traditionally gathered as a supplementary food for farm livestock: local Somerset names include ‘cowbelly’, ‘pig’s parsnip’ and my favourite, ‘pig’s bubble’. The hollow green stalks were also used as makeshift straws for drinking the local brew, cider. Today, as on any warm summer’s day, smaller creatures are using the hogweed for drinking as well. Bluebottles, greenbottles and hoverflies all gather to feed on the supplies of nectar produced by these huge flower-heads, which viewed from the side look like fields of snow.
Among these run-of-the-mill insects is a rather splendid specimen: a green dock-leaf beetle. This is a pregnant female, its swollen abdomen a striking coppery colour, contrasting with its metallic-green head. The dock plant beneath the hogweed is covered with its tiny larvae, along with the much smaller and less distinctive male.
As a blackcap sings its fluty song in the apple tree above, a ladybird alights to join the throng. A closer look confirms my suspicions: this beautiful scarlet-and-black insect is larger, squatter and flatter than any of our native species. It is an alien invader: the harlequin ladybird. The bizarre thing about the harlequin is that it is so variable in appearance: some are pillar-box red, with fifteen or more black spots; others are jet-black with reddish-orange spots; and a few are pale orange, with virtually no visible spots.
Harlequin ladybirds were, until a few years ago, almost unknown in Britain. But in the past decade this colourful insect, originally from eastern Asia, has reached our shores. It almost certainly arrived on plants imported by garden centres and, in a frighteningly short time, it has become the default ladybird. Here in the parish, indeed in my own garden, they now seem to be more common than the native two-spot and seven-spot varieties; which, if the doomsayers are to be believed, may now be heading rapidly towards extinction, having been outcompeted by their larger relative.
Further down the garden, the mellifluous tones of the blackcap are replaced by a series of strident and persistent ‘hoo-eet’ sounds. These come from a pair of chiffchaffs, whose neat, olive-green spring plumage has faded to the shade of a milky cup of tea. Their tatty appearance bears witness to several weeks of effort finding food for their chicks, which have now left their nest, and are hidden away in the dense lime-green foliage of our cider-apple trees.
Here, in the sunniest, warmest part of the garden, among sunshine-yellow meadow buttercups and creeping buttercups, electric-blue matchsticks hover from plant to plant. These are common blue and azure damselflies, beautiful insects which can only be told apart by examining the pattern on the first two segments of their abdomen, immediately behind the thorax. Take a closer look, and you’ll notice that the pattern on the common blue looks like an oak tree, while that on the azure damselfly bears a remarkable similarity to the Honda logo. Bizarre, but true.
People are often puzzled about the difference between damselflies and dragonflies. Size is a good guide: most dragonflies are fairly large, while damselflies are small, though there are a few exceptions. But the easiest way to tell them apart is when they perch: damselflies hold their wings tight to their body (or in a few cases, at a 45-degree angle), whereas dragonflies perch with their wings held at right angles to their body, recalling a First World War biplane.
As if on cue, a larger, yellowish-brown insect catches my eye as it zooms past. It is undoubtedly a dragonfly, but which one? It perches briefly on a head of hogweed, its squat upper abdomen tapering to a point at the tip. This, together with its colour and pattern, marks it out as the most common dragonfly of early summer, the four-spotted chaser.
This name is something of a misnomer, as each wing actually has two spots, making eight in all. The body is a melange of yellows, ochres and browns; but the most striking feature is the delicate yellow latticework along the forward edge of the front wings, known as the ‘costa’. It is a beautiful insect to see, especially in my own garden. But what worries me – especially on such a fine, warm and sunny day – is the virtual absence of butterflies. Only the odd speckled wood and large white can be seen, despite an abundance of nectar for them to feed on.
Our garden has proved to be, over the years, something of a hotspot for butterflies, with no fewer than twenty species recorded here – one third of the British total. As well as the usual kinds, I’ve seen brown argus and marbled white, small copper and common blue, and the long-distance migrants, clouded yellow and painted lady. But three unusually wet summers in a row have taken their toll.
As I walk back towards the house, I realise that what used to be a pristine lawn, mown within an inch of its life by the previous owners, has already passed through the stage of being a grassy meadow and, on the sunny, south-facing side, is rapidly reverting to scrub. Ash, elm and apple saplings, some well over my own height, compete with each other for diminishing space. If I don’t do something – and fairly soon – in another few years the meadow will have turned into a full-scale copse.
AT THIS TIME of year, the walls around the parish are suddenly ablaze with a striking flower, red valerian, whose colour and texture remind me of something out of a Laura Ashley catalogue. For a few weeks, from mid-June to mid-July, this attractive and conspicuous plant is thriving. It may be called red, but in truth the colour is a kind of deep pink: some plants shade towards the violet end of the spectrum, others have a more russet – and to my eye, more pleasing – tone. Occasionally, a striking snow-white variant appears among its neighbouring blooms.
Like so many of our wall-loving plants, red valerian is an immigrant, originally brought to Britain from the Mediterranean during Tudor times, to adorn rockeries in ornamental gardens. After a couple of hundred years it managed to escape from confinement, and has since spread across much of England and Wales, though its stronghold remains here in the West Country.
Given the visual dominance of these gaudy flowers, it would be easy to overlook s
ome of the less ostentatious botanical residents of the village. Fortunately, given my lack of expertise on all things botanical, my friend and colleague Brett has agreed to accompany me on an evening’s cycle ride around the back lanes of the parish, to open my eyes to the floral wonders I might otherwise miss.
In the old stone wall that runs alongside the road by the White Horse Inn, we come across ivy-leaved toadflax, flowering in profusion. Like the red valerian, this is also an import from abroad, having been brought here from southern Europe in the early seventeenth century. The delicate, tiny, lobed leaves are held by thin stalks, which support hundreds of exquisite flowers: pale lilac in shade, with custard-yellow centres. Its scientific name, muralis, indicates its preferred habitat. This plant propagates itself in a most ingenious way. Whereas the shoots of most plants grow towards the sun, those of the toadflax are ‘heliophobic’, growing away from the light. So once flowering is over, the seed-heads bend downwards, burrowing into the cracks and crevices of the walls, and thus enabling the plant to find new places to grow.
Brett points out that the stone itself is not a natural feature of the local landscape, but was brought here from the nearby Mendips. The damp, shaded side of this wall is also covered in ferns, including the splendidly named maidenhair spleenwort. Its long, narrow stalks support pairs of pale, lime-green leaves; the overall effect, if you have a fairly vivid imagination, a little like a young girl’s hair. A closer look reveals a smaller fern, a rusty-back; its leaves are encrusted with copper-coloured scales, the texture of soft felt.
