Wild Hares and Hummingbirds

by Stephen Moss

  The more I look at badgers, the more they strike me as odd. They are mustelids – the same family as otters, weasels and stoats – but all these animals have a recognisable kinship with one another, reflected in their long, slender shape and sleek appearance. In contrast, badgers are stout, short-tailed, with that huge head and unmistakable black-and-white pattern. Looked at more closely, they strike me as having more in common with anteaters or armadillos than any native British mammal.

  They range slowly and deliberately back and forth across the clover-covered lawn; one, bolder animal venturing onto the patio, so close I can no longer focus my binoculars. The cubs are almost the size of their parents now, but still retain their playful manner.

  An hour or so after they first appeared, the badgers trail off, one by one, into the nearby woods. For the rest of the night they will forage for whatever they can find. But whatever they discover, it is unlikely to be as convenient as what’s on offer on Susie and Kev’s back lawn.

  BY THE MIDDLE of July, the world is rapidly turning purple. Along the parish verges, the yellows, creams and whites of spring have given way to the mauves, lilacs and violets of summer. These richer, fuller, deeper shades suit this time of plenty, at the very moment in the calendar when every plant and animal is busy fulfilling its biological destiny.

  They look pretty too, these varied visions of floral excess. Purple loosestrife, the undisputed queen of that shade, is in full bloom along the edges of the rhynes and ditches, heavy with colour. It is known locally as ‘water vinny’; another folk name is ‘long purples’, which could hardly be bettered for this statuesque wild flower, standing tall and proud in the damper areas of the parish throughout July.

  On the drier ground between, there are tight clumps of creeping thistle: tall, slender, with a tuft of white hairs perched on top of the dull purple head; and a larger but equally spiky plant, the teasel. Unlike the familiar deep brown objects my grandmother kept in her favourite vase, these are in flower, not seed; and pale green, with a light dusting of purple across their spines. Teasels were once grown commercially, being used to clean and comb cloth, as their fine, sharp spines were far more effective than anything we could artificially manufacture.

  But the most common floral purple, found along almost every lane and drove, is the great willowherb. Its delicate pinkish-purple flowers, clustered atop tall, green, hairy stalks, provide a new layer of colour between road and hedgerow. Like so many familiar summer flowers, it has many country names, in this case sharing a theme. ‘Apple-pie’, ‘coddled apples’, ‘custard-cups’, ‘currant-dumpling’ and ‘codlins-and-cream’, all refer to a link with fruit-based puddings – ‘codlins’ being sour apples that were boiled in milk.

  For more than three hundred years, since the seventeenth-century botanist John Ray claimed to have crushed the leaves and smelt apples, books repeated this anecdote as an explanation of these fruity folk names. But Geoffrey Grigson pointed out that the leaves and flowers of the great willow-herb ‘have no characteristic smell’. I rub them between my fingers, and discover that he is quite correct; they are virtually scentless. Still, it is a pretty flower, adding a welcome splash of colour to the increasingly brown-and-yellow scene.

  What is missing is the great willowherb’s cousin, rosebay willowherb. The Americans call this familiar plant fireweed, for its ability to colonise newly burned or cleared ground. Known for its sudden appearance on bomb sites during the Second World War, it has now spread throughout Britain along roadside verges and railway embankments, using the slipstream of passing traffic to spread its seeds. Rosebay willowherb is a common sight along the nearby M5 and A38, but is not found along the more lushly vegetated roadsides of this parish.

  There is some dispute about whether or not rosebay willowherb is an alien plant, but my final vision of purple certainly is. At this time of year almost every garden in the village boasts its very own buddleia bush, whose purple pyramids are bursting out of its dense green foliage. Originally from the Himalayan foothills, buddleia was brought to Britain in the late-Victorian era, and soon spread via gardens and waste ground. With buddleia, of course, come butterflies: and, as befits its brash, exotic nature, brash, exotic ones. Today a peacock butterfly perches on one of the flower-heads, greedily sucking up the juicy nectar with his delicate proboscis.

  I am momentarily transfixed by his beauty: the rich orange upperwings, with their startling ‘eyes’, contrasting with the sooty black underwings, the perfect camouflage should it need to hide. As I watch, a movement at the corner of my eye draws my attention. Another insect is moving rapidly across my line of vision; and finally, the realisation of what I am looking at begins to dawn. The synapses click into place, and I feel my face crack into a smile. For this vision of beauty whizzing back and forth before my eyes is none other than a hummingbird hawkmoth.

  Of all the wild creatures I had hoped to see within the borders of the parish, the hummingbird hawkmoth is at the top of the list. Just consider its life story. Sometime earlier this spring, this little insect set off from its birthplace, somewhere in North Africa or southern Spain. It flew north, a distance of some 1,500 miles, before finally making landfall here in Britain. Now, on this fine, sunny day in the middle of July, it has chosen to feed on the buddleia bush in my very own garden.

  I watch as it zooms to and fro, hovering momentarily by each flower-head, extending its proboscis to feed, then moving a few inches up, down, left or right. I have watched hummingbirds many times in the Americas, and the hummingbird hawkmoth really does rival them in the flying department. Convergent evolution truly is a remarkable thing.

  I look even closer, and study its subtle shades and features. The ‘tail’ (the rear of the abdomen) is dark brown above with white sides, while the body is a paler greyish-brown colour, with a soft, furry texture. Large, staring eyes give the creature the appearance of a small mammal, rather than an insect. Its wings, held at an angle above its body, whirr back and forth so fast I can only just see the pale orange patch on their rear edge. And that long, black proboscis is constantly searching for nectar, to provide the energy it needs to keep up this astonishing performance.

  I wonder why the hawkmoth doesn’t just follow the example of the peacock butterfly, and stay put for a while. But its strategy is one of perpetual motion rather than rest, and it works very well. The hummingbird hawkmoth is a highly successful and widespread species, found from Portugal in the west to Japan in the east, and in a good summer as far north as Scandinavia.

  It is also seen increasingly often here in Britain, with surprised householders often convinced that they have seen a real hummingbird feeding on their garden flowers. But while I am delighted to see this exquisite creature, especially in my own little patch of airspace, I am concerned about the reason why it is here. There can be little doubt that the hawkmoth’s recent northward spread is due to the effects of global climate change. It may well benefit from this; other, equally special creatures, may not.

  As the hummingbird hawkmoth flicks his wings a little harder than before, and disappears over the elder hedge and away, I suppress these gloomy thoughts, and simply celebrate the few glorious moments we have shared.

  ANOTHER MIGRANT INSECT is famed for its occasional mass invasions; and in the summer of 2009, we experienced the greatest of these for many years. The delightfully named painted lady butterfly is a softer-coloured, more orange version of the familiar red admiral. And just like the red admiral it is a migrant, travelling all the way to our shores from Spain and North Africa.

  But unlike the red admiral, it is far from a regular visitor. Some years we see only a few; in others, they arrive in their thousands. Or, as in 2009, in their tens of millions. That year I noticed my first painted lady at the very end of May, when I came across one feeding in my garden. Over the next couple of months, I saw thousands of them, usually whizzing across at eye level, here one moment, gone the next, as they headed on north.

  On the very same day that I saw
my first painted lady, the newspapers ran the story that Britain was experiencing the biggest mass migration of this enigmatic butterfly since the 1960s, and possibly since records began. They had been spotted coming in off the sea at Portland Bill in Dorset a week earlier; and within a few days had arrived in force. Later in the summer, reports suggested that with each butterfly laying 300 eggs, by early August there could be more than a billion painted ladies in the country.

  This may have been an exaggeration, yet there is no doubt that during that memorable summer the painted lady was by far the most abundant butterfly in Britain. By September, numbers were falling rapidly, and by October they had all but disappeared, though sightings of them heading south, out to sea across the English Channel, proved that some, at least, were attempting to return whence they had come.

  The painted lady year aside, for a few weeks each late June and early July we are in what a naturalist friend of mine calls ‘the butterfly gap’. This is the period between spring butterflies such as the orange-tip, that reach peak numbers in April and May, and those that don’t emerge until July, such as the gatekeeper. But now, from the middle of July onwards, they are back with a vengeance: as well as meadow browns and gatekeepers, there are fresh broods of commas and peacocks, so that on a sunny day there may be ten different species on the wing in my garden alone.

  One of these looks, at first sight, like a darker version of the male meadow brown. It is, in fact, a ringlet: an unassuming denizen of the woodland edge, with dark, velvety smooth upperwings and brown underwings, each dotted with a series of what my son George calls ‘hula hoops’: the tiny cream rings that give this butterfly its name.

  EACH SUMMER THE village is invaded; not, this time, by migrating birds or butterflies, but by a group of noisy, exuberant, but good-natured children. They have come from a deprived part of south Bristol, which even though it is less than thirty miles away, might as well be on another planet. These seven- to eleven-year-olds are here for a week, thanks to the Avalon Camps scheme, which gives them the chance of a holiday in the country.

  My neighbour Jon and his team of eager volunteers run the camp with just the right balance of discipline and friendly encouragement. The children enjoy sports and games, drawing and model-making, quizzes, barbecues, songs and stories, and a final-night concert. And, thanks to an uncharacteristic willingness to volunteer on my part, nature study.

  Soon after daybreak on a late-July morning, I am on the edge of a field behind the church hall, opening a moth trap. The selection is not quite as impressive as earlier in the season, as the hawkmoths have now disappeared, but it is still colourful and varied enough to interest the children. Among our haul is a single female ghost swift, with a more orangey-yellow hue than the male I saw back in June. The children look suitably impressed.

  After breakfast we head out into the wilds of Shapwick Heath, where the children can really let off steam. Given a selection of nets and plastic containers, and the freedom to run around catching any insect they can find, they reveal their true nature. They are no longer ‘deprived kids’, or whatever label has been given them in the past, but just kids, showing the enthusiasm for the natural world that all children possess, but rarely get the chance to indulge. They have lightning-quick instincts, and catch a far bigger selection of creatures than I could manage. I do have to discourage them from collecting too many white-lipped snails, which being abundant, varied and easy to get, fill up the boxes pretty quickly.

  Two hours later, they pile back onto their coach, having rather reluctantly released their quarry back into the wild. I go home and lie down, drained by their sheer energy, but also deeply fulfilled. The whole experience confirms my belief that if we could only get our nation’s children out and about, encountering nature on their own terms, we would solve many of the problems currently besetting today’s youngsters; and perhaps create a whole new generation of naturalists.

  AN HOUR BEFORE dusk on a warm, muggy evening at the end of the month, a cold front approaches from the north-west, bringing a rapidly freshening breeze. The swallows are on the wing, hawking for insects among the newly sheared sheep. Their short tails and erratic, jerky movements show these are recently fledged youngsters, just out of their nests in the nearby barns. They need to test those wings, for in not much more than two months’ time they will be using them for a very long journey indeed.

  Further along the road, a busy farmyard is home to more swallows, along with a species of bird that has lived alongside human beings for even longer: the house sparrow. A male sits on the telegraph wire, tail cocked, while a few yards away, on the farm gate, a female trembles her wings. She looks like a young bird, begging for food; but in this case her begging has a more basic purpose, to entice the male to fly down to mate with her.

  There are good numbers of sparrows here, certainly compared to many other parts of Britain. But when I quiz Rick he tells me that, back in the 1960s and 70s, he used to see sparrows here in huge flocks, with well over a thousand birds in each. I recall that when I was growing up on the outskirts of London, at about the same time, vast flocks of sparrows were a common sight.

  Seeing the sparrows and swallows together reminds me of the day, a few years ago, when we first arrived at our new home. It was, I recall, the hottest day of the hottest month ever recorded in Britain. As I emerged from the packed car after a long and tiring journey, the very first sound I heard was the familiar chirping of a house sparrow. And the first bird I saw, shooting overhead in the clear blue sky a moment later, was a swallow. For me, these two species symbolise the polar opposites of life here in the parish: one an unpretentious bird that stays put, the other a showy acrobat that travels the globe, racking up thousands of miles in its short but eventful lifetime.

  AUGUST

  AUGUST MARKS THE height of summer: long, hot, sunny days, the hum of bumblebees, and the daily traffic jam along the motorway, as holidaymakers head south-west on their annual migration to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. During the evenings and weekends, the sportier villagers gather to bat and bowl at the cricket club to the rear of the White Horse Inn. Preparations are also well under way for the main event in the village calendar: Harvest Home.

  But although we still have a month or more of fine weather to look forward to, one of our star summer visitors has already headed away from the parish airspace, to new oceans of blue. The swifts, which cut through the summer air like test pilots, have gone; leaving only an echo of their banshee screams, the memory fading with every passing day.

  Almost all of Britain’s 80,000 pairs of swifts are now well on their way south, crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert before spending the winter in Central Africa. For a bird that habitually flies 500 miles or more a day when here in Britain, this journey presents few problems. Feeding on tiny flying insects as they go, they spend more than half the year under African skies, before returning at the end of April or in the first few days of May.

  Given that swifts are with us for just three months, it is extraordinary what a hold they have on our consciousness. This is a bird of superlatives: a bird that can catch 100,000 insects in a single day, stay airborne for as long as four years, and travel more than a million miles during its lifetime. We think about swifts even during their long absence, so that on a warm, sunny day in late April I find myself gazing at the skies, willing them to return.

  Now that the swifts have departed, the end of the summer is in sight. The days are getting imperceptibly shorter, birdsong is beginning to fade, and intimations of mortality are all around us.

  Not that our other iconic summer visitor would endorse this view. Over to the west of the parish, in a cluster of industrial units, half a dozen pairs of swallows are busily collecting food for their second broods. Every minute or two, they bring little balls of tiny flying insects back to the nest. I duck as the birds swoop low past my head, even though I know their piloting skills mean there is no danger of a collision. From inside I can hear the soft twitter
ing of the youngsters, whose volume rises each day, as they begin to outgrow their flimsy nest of mud, straw, grass and feathers. It won’t be long before this brood leave the nest and join their well-grown siblings on the telegraph wires outside. And in less than two months they will flick their wings, drop off the wires and float away, south, to join the swifts in Africa.

  OF ALL BRITAIN’S butterflies, my favourites are the blues. They are a dazzling array of beauty in miniature – even the large blue is small by butterfly standards. Many of our blue butterflies can only be found on what is confusingly called ‘unimproved’ grassland – habitats that have never been ploughed, sprayed, or planted with crops. Such places – mainly on chalk and limestone soils – are as rare as hen’s teeth in the modern British countryside, so the ranges of most of these butterflies are fairly limited.

  But on warm, sunny days in August, two species of blue butterfly do visit my garden, sometimes in good numbers. The common blue and the brown argus are never very obvious, being so much smaller and less showy than the peacocks, red admirals and commas that dominate this late-summer season. They are also less active, perching to feed on a thistle-head or clump of meadowsweet, rather than flitting about like their more exhibitionist cousins.

  Take a closer look, though, and their appeal becomes clear. The larger of the two, the common blue, has a slightly looser, floppier flight than its relative. When it lands, it may momentarily open its wings to reveal a fine, pale blue shade, as if someone has sprinkled a thin layer of microscopic particles over their surface. The female is less striking than the male, and browner in hue, though a bluish tinge can usually be seen as she turns towards the sun.