Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (23 page)

Elder itself is a remarkable, if often overlooked, plant. Neither bush nor tree, it has been described as ‘the MDF of the plant world’, for its toughness, and ‘nature’s medicine chest’, for its widespread uses in traditional medicine. It has given rise to plenty of folklore, including the belief that Christ’s cross was made of elder wood. And back in the seventeenth century, men driving cattle along the
droves
to market are said to have cut themselves a stick of elder to ward away evil.

A
S THE HEAT
intensifies through the long July days, it builds to a climax, before eventually releasing the tension with a summer thunderstorm. Signalling a change in the weather, swallows and house martins leave their nests and head skywards, gathering in large, twittering flocks. They fly just ahead of the rain clouds, where they pick off clusters of tiny insects to take back to their young. Sometimes they are joined by the more streamlined, scythe-like silhouettes of swifts, visitors from nearby towns and more distant cities. The swifts will soon disappear south, but the swallows and martins will linger here well into September, even perhaps October, before they and their off spring embark on their long and perilous journey to Africa.

Meanwhile, in our back garden, a permanent resident of the parish is busily feeding its hungry brood. A cider-apple tree is covered with white blossom, like icing on a wedding cake, hiding the trunk completely from view. But a chorus of cheeping sounds coming from this snow-white canopy demands a closer look. Halfway up the trunk I see a neat, oval-shaped hole; the worn, smooth, lighter patch of wood at its base showing that it is occupied by a brood of great spotted woodpeckers. Every couple of minutes I hear a loud and resonant ‘chip’, the signal that one of the
parent
birds is returning to the nest with food. Moments later it flies in, bouncing through the air on broad, rounded wings.

The male woodpecker usually lands a short distance above the nest hole, then manoeuvres himself into position before entering. A minute or so later he departs, having momentarily satisfied the hunger of his brood. He and his mate keep up their duties during every daylight hour for three frantic weeks, and even after the youngsters have left the nest, the parents will continue to feed them for another week or so.

The old name of this species was ‘pied woodpecker’, and its contrasting black-and-white plumage is certainly striking, as is the bright crimson patch on the back of the male’s head. Great spotted woodpeckers have become much more common even in my lifetime, and now frequently visit garden bird-feeders, scaring off the smaller birds by their presence. They also raid nestboxes for baby blue tits, but despite this predatory behaviour the great spotted woodpecker has not yet joined the magpie on the blacklist of demonised garden birds.

In some ways it is surprising to find woodpeckers here at all in this flat, largely treeless landscape, where treecreepers are a rarity, and jays and nuthatches are absent. But there are enough clusters of oak and ash, especially around the houses and farms, to provide a refuge for them, along with the largest British member of its family, the green woodpecker.

About the size of a pigeon, the green woodpecker has yellow-and-green plumage, a scarlet crown, and large, staring eyes, making it impossible to mistake for any other bird. It is very partial to ants, and in summer can often be found feeding on the village lawns, pecking at the anthills in the longer grass to disturb their multitudinous occupants.

If my neighbours venture outdoors early in the morning, they may see this colourful bird heading off into the distance on clumsy, bouncing wings, and uttering the call that gave it its traditional country name, the ‘yaffle’. My children, hearing this distant echoing sound, always refer to its maker as ‘the woodpecker that laughs at us’.

T
WO OTHER KINDS
of woodpecker used to live here in the parish, though sadly both are now long gone. The smallest European woodpecker, the lesser spotted, is virtually half the size of its great spotted relative; barely the length of a sparrow. True to its size, it behaves rather like a songbird, and in winter often joins flocks of tits as they travel around woods and hedgerows in search of food.

The lesser spotted woodpecker population boomed here in Somerset from the late eighteenth century onwards, after it was discovered that the process of cider-making caused drinkers to suffer from lead poisoning. Cider sales plummeted, but the orchards were left standing; with
the
trees’ gradual decay providing the ideal breeding habitat for the lesser spotted woodpecker. In
Birds of Somersetshire
, published in 1869, Cecil Smith describes this species as being much more common than the great spotted, and as late as the 1920s, it was still considered to be the most numerous woodpecker in Somerset. Given its retiring habits, this means it must have been very common indeed.

By the end of the Second World War those ancient orchards had finally been grubbed up, and the lesser spotted woodpecker was beginning its rapid decline. My neighbour Mick remembers them nesting in the orchard alongside our home as recently as twenty years ago, but soon afterwards they had gone. The loss of elms, that classic tree of the English lowland landscape, was partly to blame; as was the close cutting of hedgerows, which the woodpeckers used as corridors to move around the neighbourhood.

Today, the lesser spotted woodpecker has disappeared not only from this parish, but from the whole of the Somerset Levels. This decline has been mirrored in the country as a whole, and there are now fewer than two thousand breeding pairs in Britain, mostly in our ancient woodlands. Even these are now under threat from a population explosion of the introduced muntjac deer, which browse the young saplings, destroying the breeding habitat for these, and many other, woodland birds.

A fourth species of woodpecker has disappeared not
only
from this parish, and from the county of Somerset, but also from the whole of the British countryside. With a plumage like the bark of a tree, and the peculiar habit of twisting its neck and hissing at its enemies, the wryneck is a truly bizarre bird. It was once common enough to have acquired not only its vernacular name, but a wide range of folk names, including ‘snake bird’, ‘twister’ and ‘emmet hunter’, referring to its partiality for ants. But my favourite name for the wryneck is ‘cuckoo’s mate’, so given because the wryneck used to arrive here in the middle of April, about the same time as the cuckoo.

The poet John Clare told the tale of a boy who disturbed a wryneck at its nest in a hollow tree; when the bird poked its head out of the hole and hissed, the boy assumed it was a snake, and fell to the ground in panic. Sadly such an experience is now denied the youngsters of this and every other English parish. A century ago the wryneck was common in orchards throughout southern England; but, like the lesser spotted woodpecker, it began to decline, this decline rapidly turning into freefall. The last pair bred in Somerset during the Second World War, and by the 1980s the wryneck had completely disappeared as a British breeding bird.

Another lost bird, the red-backed shrike, vanished at about the same time. Cecil Smith describes the shrike as common in Somerset, where it was known as the ‘butcher bird’, from its habit of impaling its prey – beetles, frogs and baby birds – on a thorn bush.

The reasons for the rapid and terminal decline of these two once widespread birds are still a mystery. It may have been the trend towards cooler, wetter summers; or perhaps the increased use of pesticides – we don’t really know. I have seen the occasional wryneck and red-backed shrike along the east coast in autumn; migrants stopping off to rest and feed on their way from their Scandinavian breeding grounds to their African winter quarters. Red-backed shrikes have recently bred again in Britain, and may be on the verge of making a welcome comeback. But the wryneck appears to be lost to us for ever.

The story of the wryneck is not simply the tale of one vanishing species, but a parable about the devastating changes wrought on the British countryside in the past hundred years. For now that the orchard by my home – and every other orchard in England – no longer echoes with the wryneck’s repetitive, high-pitched call, the whole landscape has not just been impoverished, but altered for ever. As with the cuckoo and the spotted flycatcher, this raises a pressing question: if those species our great-grandparents saw as part of their daily lives no longer survive here, does the place where we live merit the name countryside?

B
Y
J
ULY, THE
waters of the parish – ditches, rhynes and cuts, carefully demarcated according to size – are
thronged
with life. Yet as I walk or cycle past, all I see is various shades of green: the dark, turbid carpet of blanket weed, ranging from near black to moss-green; and the paler, lime-green film of duckweed. Beneath this covering, below the water’s surface, life is no doubt thriving.

Time for a spot of pond-dipping. As a child we did this all the time, though it wasn’t such an organised activity as the term ‘pond-dipping’ suggests; we just went out with our nets and jam jars and fished for tiddlers. My own children are still at an age when they are both curious and enthusiastic in equal measure; the perfect time to investigate these hidden depths. And to help us do so, and identify what we find, we are accompanied by my naturalist friend Peter, whose knowledge of the inhabitants of our fresh waters is legion.

Most of the rhynes around here are steep-sided, the banks covered in brambles and nettles; good reasons to avoid them if we want to avoid pain, tears or soakings. But the concrete bridge over Mark Yeo, near the northern boundary of the parish, provides a firm platform, free from pricking or stinging plants. It also allows easy access for the nets: ours, a colourful selection bought for rock-pooling on beach holidays; Peter’s the more professional version, a triangular muslin cone with a smooth, rosewood handle.

On this fine, sunny morning skylarks are singing, clumps of mayweed line the edges of the fields, and summer insects are already on the wing. A black-tailed
skimmer
dragonfly, his slender, powder-blue abdomen tipped with black, cruises low over the water; while matchstick-like azure damselflies flit from leaf to leaf. But the highlight is the presence of a most colourful and graceful insect: the banded demoiselle.

Banded demoiselles, which appear during warm, sunny days in June and July, are often mistaken for butterflies or day-flying moths, and indeed another name for them is ‘water-butterflies’. Today they live up to that description, fluttering delicately in little groups around the bankside vegetation, a foot or so above the surface of the water.

The dark bands across the transparent wings of the males flash constantly. They are presumably being used, like birdsong, to signal to rival males and potential mates. When the demoiselles land I am astonished by the colour of their abdomen, which varies according to the angle of the light: sometimes bottle-green, sometimes deep turquoise-blue. The female, though attractive in a quiet way, is easy to overlook as she perches on a reed stem. Her wings lack the male’s dark band, and she is pea-green in colour, with a bright metallic sheen.