Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (25 page)

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.

A
NOTHER 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.

E
ACH 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.

A
N 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.