Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (15 page)

Since the May Day bank holiday was first introduced in the late 1970s, we have come to associate it with a long weekend off work, but its origins go much further back in time. The pagan festivals of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, both marked the cross-quarter day: the mid-point between the sun’s progression from the spring equinox on 21 March to the summer solstice three months later.

For centuries the English have celebrated May Day with a range of traditional pastimes: from maypoles and morris dancing to the crowning of the May Queen. May baskets of flowers used to be left on neighbours’ doorsteps; a custom echoed today in the springtime appearance of hanging baskets on many of the village homes. And not so long ago, farmers would have chosen this time to move their livestock from their winter home on the surrounding hills, along the broad, muddy droves, to graze on the summer pastures of Tealham Moor.

We also mark this time of year because this is when we can finally leave the memories of winter behind, and celebrate the onset of summer; though even here in the mild south-west ground frosts can occur well into May. As is
traditional
on bank holidays, we sometimes get rain, and even though this might dampen the spirits of the morris dancers, it does supposedly foretell a fertile year ahead. And the maypole itself is a symbol of fertility, both for the men and women who dance around it, and for the land.

For our parish wildlife, May is also a time of growth and fertility. It marks the start of three months of frantic activity, during which time eggs will hatch, babies will be fed, flowers will bloom, and millions – perhaps billions – of insects will buzz, bite and sting their way through their brief lives, and indeed through ours.

The weather for this month, and for June, July and August, will be crucial to the success or failure of these attempts to breed and multiply. So the wildlife, the farmers and the rest of us are all hoping for a good season – not too wet, but not too dry either, with just enough rain, and plenty of warm sunshine. This will ripen the crops, let plants and animals thrive, and allow us to sit in our gardens or stroll along the parish lanes, enjoying the great British summer to the full.

O
N THIS PARTICULAR
May Day, I have come a few miles west of the parish, to the beach at Berrow. Showers are forecast, but for the time being a milky morning sun bathes the sand in a thin, yellowish glow. As I cross the sheltering dunes, I am buffeted by a cool, fresh breeze which blows
the
tidal pools into eddies, and whips up sand along the strandline.

Lying between the busy holiday resorts of Burnham and Weston, Berrow is quieter and less crowded than both, with only the occasional dog-walker, jogger or horse-rider disturbing the solitude. This is the nearest this part of Somerset gets to the seaside, though the sign warning of ‘soft sand and mud’, suggests that bathing here might not be a very good idea.

Beyond the sign, only a narrow strip of sand remains; sand mainly concealed by messy deposits of seaweed, driftwood, and the flotsam and jetsam of our throwaway society. As I emerge at the top of the beach I step across detritus washed up by the sea: broken branches bleached white in the sun, plastic bottles in a range of colours and shapes, and a child’s trainer left behind after a day on the beach.

This is where three rivers meet. The River Brue, which runs along the southern border of my parish, joins the estuary of the Parrett, which has already wended its way forty miles north from its source in Dorset. This in turn flows into Bridgwater Bay, adjacent to the much larger estuary of England’s longest river, the Severn. The mudflats provide a profitable feeding place for tens of thousands of waders at low tide, while the raised banks of Steart Point across the smaller estuary are a haven where they can safely roost as the waters rise.

At low tide the sea becomes invisible, having retreated
almost
to the horizon, so that the island of Steep Holm appears to rise straight out of the land. But now, on a high spring tide, the landscape – and seascape – is transformed. Steep Holm has regained its island status, and from Hinkley Point nuclear power station on my left, to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on my right, all is under water.

Along the shoreline, black against the pale sand, is one of the beach’s permanent residents, a scavenging crow. He and the local gulls witness the seasonal movements of birds here: Arctic terns and ringed plovers in spring; gannets and Manx shearwaters in summer; clouds of knots and sanderlings in autumn; and huge, swirling flocks of dunlins in winter. Today, there are only a few late-returning swallows flying in off the sea, which apart from a hardy yachtsman taking advantage of the breeze, appears empty.

The twice-daily movement of the tides brings fresh supplies of seaweed to the higher parts of the beach, on which millions of tiny sandflies make their home. Behind the beach lie the dunes; and beyond the dunes a golf course; with a small reedbed sandwiched between. This morning, despite the grey skies and chilly breeze, the reeds and the bushes resound with birdsong, in particular the varied sounds of the warbler family: whitethroats and lesser whitethroats, blackcaps and chiffchaffs, and Cetti’s, sedge and reed warblers.

B
ACK IN THE
parish, the reeds lining the ditches on both sides of the back lanes are reaching their peak. These are the common reed,
Phragmites australis
, found in wetlands not only throughout Britain, but across much of the world; here in the parish it grows in striking profusion in every watery ditch.

The tall, thick stems, with their feathery, plumed heads, often block the view of the fields beyond the lanes, especially in spring and summer when their growth is at its most luxuriant. They sway at any hint of a breeze, and when the wind strengthens they create a pleasing background murmur. Known locally as shalders, reeds were widely used for thatching on the levels right up to the present century. Now that they are no longer harvested commercially, they are left uncut, providing the ideal habitat for a specialist wetland bird, the reed warbler.

The reed warbler is the classic ‘little brown job’: small, unassuming, and generally hidden out of sight in the reeds. In May and June the rhynes of the parish resound with its rhythmic and repetitive song, although I would be surprised if more than half a dozen of my fellow villagers were aware of the bird at all. Yet it has an extraordinary story to tell: of a global voyage to and from distant lands, in the very heart of Africa.

Reed warblers arrive back in Britain in the middle of April, though I rarely hear them here until the end of the month. This is when the males are seeking out their breeding territories, sometimes in a tiny patch of reeds
hardly
worthy of the name, where I can hear them singing from dawn until dusk.

Without their song, we would be probably not even realise they were here, for they hardly ever emerge from their hidden home. They build their nest in the reeds, expertly weaving together a neat, conical cup from strands of grass, lined with moss and feathers, attached to the stems. Into this fragile basket the female will deposit her clutch of four or five olive-coloured eggs.

Only later in the year, when the youngsters leave the safety of their nest, do I finally get a decent view of reed warblers. Even then they are not all that easy to see, as they skulk around the foliage of the bramble bushes and hedgerows, dashing back into their reedy sanctuary at the slightest sign of danger.

W
HAT STRIKES ME
as strange, as I walk, cycle, or drive along the village lanes, and hear reed warblers singing from virtually every corner, is that I am not hearing another summer visitor; one intimately connected with this species. In the time I have lived here, I have never once heard a cuckoo: a sound so closely associated with the coming of spring it is marked by annual letters to
The Times
newspaper.

Just after May Day, when the cuckoo’s call should have been echoing across every village green in England, I
bump
into a neighbour of ours, Mick. He has spent his whole life in the parish, and his keen interest in birds makes him an oracle on changes in our local birdlife. I ask him if there used to be cuckoos here. ‘Cuckoos?’ he replies incredulously. ‘Cuckoos! They used to drive us mad with their calling!’

Yet Mick hasn’t heard one in the village for a decade or more. ‘I suppose they’re down the road at that new nature reserve …’ he suggests. Sadly they are not: in half a dozen visits to Shapwick Heath this spring, I have heard just one.

The fate of the cuckoo in Somerset has been mirrored across much of lowland England, although the species does appear to be holding its own in Scotland, where cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of meadow pipits, rather than reed warblers. Why cuckoos have declined, and so precipitously, we are not entirely sure. There is clearly a problem on the bird’s wintering grounds, just south of the Sahara, which are rapidly turning into desert as a result of global climate change, which means that wintering cuckoos have nothing to eat.

It may also be because of a drop in numbers, here in Britain, of the larger caterpillars the young cuckoo needs in order to survive. And as with other late migrants such as the turtle dove and spotted flycatcher, a shift forward in the start of spring may be putting these birds ‘out of sync’ with their food supply; and in the cuckoo’s case, with the lifecycles of its hosts.

What is certain, though, is that if this decline
continues
, the cuckoo will eventually lose its place as the quintessential sign of the coming of spring. I doubt very much if the children at our village school have ever seen or heard a cuckoo. If they are aware of it at all, they probably place it in the same category as the dragon, the phoenix and other mythical creatures. In another decade or so, when cuckoos may well have disappeared from the whole of southern Britain, what will they mean to us then, beyond a set of old rural stories and sayings, growing less and less relevant as each year passes?

T
HE REED WARBLER’S
close relative, the sedge warbler, can also be found in the parish, but in much smaller numbers than its cousin. If seen well, the two are easy to tell apart: the sedge warbler’s plumage is streaked rather than plain, and it has a prominent pale eyestripe, giving it a rather dapper appearance.