Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (21 page)

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.

A
T 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 some 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.

The ditches along Vole Road are filling up with plant life too, much of it of the floating variety. Duckweed and frogbit, looking rather like a miniature water lily, dominate. But from time to time I come across mats of water violet, with its tiny, pale lilac-pink flowers, whose feathery foliage covers the surface so effectively it looks as if you could walk right across without getting your feet wet. Quite a scarce plant, it thrives in these parts, where it is called by a variety of local names, including ‘cat’s eyes’ and ‘featherfoil’. At the water’s edge, I see the yellow flowers of celery-leaved buttercup, another fairly common plant in these muddy places. Its attractive yellow flowers conceal a rather unpleasant trait: the sap can poison cattle and cause human skin to break out in blisters: hence its alternative name of ‘cursed crowfoot’.

The cow parsley and oil-seed rape that so dominated the byways of the parish a month or so ago have now died back. Their place has been taken by stands of hogweed which, as in my own garden, are covered with feeding insects. Nearby, on a metal five-barred gate, Brett spots another, larger insect. About half an inch long, it is a snipe-fly, often called the ‘down-looker fly’ because of its unusual habit of resting with its head pointing down towards the
ground
. The name snipe-fly is supposed to be due to its attenuated shape, like a snipe’s bill. But I wonder if it might also be due to its mottled coloration; the reddish-brown abdomen resembling the plumage of a snipe.

The foliage along the ditches is home to what seem at first sight to be a whole range of different kinds of mollusc. Snails of all shades and patterns abound: some pale yellow, others strikingly black and white. Yet, in fact, all these snails belong to the same species, the white-lipped banded snail, also known as ‘humbug snails’ from their resemblance to the old-fashioned children’s sweet. Despite their varied appearance, these snails are genetically almost identical to each other – a bit like us, really.

O
N MIDSUMMER’S EVE
, the half-moon rises in the southern sky. From the ancient drove that runs eastwards between Kingsway and Perry Road I can see, as usual, the church tower to the south, with the silhouette of Crook Peak to the north.

An upturned, rusting bathtub, once a drinking trough for the local cattle, marks the halfway point along the drove. The hedgerows are taller and thicker than elsewhere in the parish; and are cut less frequently, creating high barriers on either side of the path. From deep within, a whitethroat utters its scolding call. The cowpats are hard
as
nails, as is the ground; very different from the muddy sludge I tramped through last winter.

I am stirred from my reverie, first by a male pheasant shooting up from just beneath my feet; then by two roebucks which appear where the drove narrows, just before it emerges onto the lane. The first leaps out right in front of me, pauses, and looks round momentarily, before stotting away like an antelope on the African savannah. He is swiftly followed by the other, and for a moment I am able to take in the beauty of this, the smaller of our two native deer species. Each sports a tan coat, shading darker along the back; a quizzical face, framing a round, black nose, and long, pricked ears, with two short, pointed horns sticking straight up between them.

The two bucks leap along the path before veering sharply off to the right, and plunging straight through a narrow gap in the hedge. I cycle along to where they disappeared, and peer through; they are already on the other side of the newly mown field, at least 200 yards away. In the weakening sunlight their tan colour stands out against the dark green foliage, as they stare towards me, ever alert to danger.

Roe deer were hunted to extinction in England by the start of the eighteenth century, although they did manage to hang on in the wilder parts of Scotland. The Victorians brought them back here, and now I come across them in every season of the year: on cold days in winter, their breath freezing in the air; posing in the flower-covered
fields
in spring and summer; and in autumn, glowing in the late-afternoon sun. Yet any encounter with them – especially one as intimate as this one – always feels special.

As I reach the junction between the drove and the lane, I catch a glimpse of two more shy creatures: a pair of bullfinches, perched on the edge of a hawthorn bush. In a family renowned for its charm and beauty, the bullfinch still stands out. This is partly because of its appearance: few British songbirds are quite as stunning as the male, with his combination of black head, white rump and vibrant, cherry-pink breast. You might think he would show off his finery, but the bullfinch is a shy bird.

It is also, sadly, one of our most threatened, having declined dramatically throughout Britain during the past couple of decades, like so many other farmland and woodland birds. The bullfinch has never been popular where there are orchards, as it feeds on the young buds of fruit trees; enough to make enemies in this apple-growing county. But if you know where to look, bullfinches can still be found in the hedgerows and orchards of the parish. Often they reveal themselves by sound rather than sight: uttering their soft, plaintive, piping call, rather like a child’s toy. It always strikes me as rather sad; but this is simply the way we impose our own, human emotions on wild birds. I’m sure to a female bullfinch it is the most beautiful sound in the world.

A
S THE FINE
, dry weather continues, the sound of the harvest being gathered in continues long into the evening. In the fields, in place of old-fashioned stooks of hay, there are now neat, round, glossy lumps of black polythene, like the droppings of a giant rabbit. Each casts a long evening shadow, its shiny surface reflecting a distorted image of the surrounding landscape. Their alien appearance in this rustic scene reminds me that whatever else we wish to use it for, the countryside remains primarily a food factory.

Perched on a hawthorn bush, facing into the evening sun, sits a family of linnets. The male still shows traces of the pink breast patches he sports during the breeding season; the female and the youngsters are brown, speckled greyish-buff beneath. The linnet is the forgotten bird of our pastoral landscape: neither as attractive as the yellowhammer, nor as well known as the skylark. It is a quiet, modest creature, which like its relative the bullfinch has declined in the last few decades.

The linnet family flies off into the field, joining a larger flock of linnets and goldfinches. They flit among the meadow barley and Yorkshire fog, past meadow brown butterflies, while swallows hawk for insects a few feet above their heads. The linnets and goldfinches perch on the tops of sorrels and pick off the seeds, their weight hardly bending the stalks; then take off, bouncing into the air on long, delicate wings, and uttering their light, tinkling calls.

This is a welcome, though increasingly rare, sight. Fields in the parish, in the rest of Somerset and far beyond
would
once, at this time of year, have been filled with vast flocks of finches, buntings and sparrows. But the new agriculture – with productivity and efficiency at its core – has changed all this, by removing ‘waste’ seed that would have fed the birds.

In the hour before dusk, two small tortoiseshells sit on the dry path, trembling their wings to gain a tiny amount of extra energy so they can continue feeding. Close to, they look like sunbathing birds: the hairy head and thorax contrasting with the burnt-orange wings, marked along their edges with black and bluish-mauve spots.

Just like the linnet, the small tortoiseshell has become a far less frequent sight in recent years. This is since the arrival, spreading northwards, from continental Europe, of a new species of parasitic fly,
Sturmia bella
, which lays its eggs on the nettle leaves on which the tortoiseshell’s caterpillars feed. Once the caterpillar has inadvertently digested the fly’s eggs, the larva in turn devours the caterpillar from within. Having arrived on our shores a decade or so ago, this unwelcome parasite has rampaged throughout Britain, reducing small tortoiseshell numbers by half.