Adventures in the undergrowth

R’s parents live in an idyllic part of rural Hampshire, and the fields that surround their home reveal views that shift and change with each passing season. It’s heavily agricultural, but there is plenty to see all the same. As we stood taking in this wonderful late summer view of a ripening oilseed crop it was gratifying to see how many ox eye daisies and field poppies had infiltrated the field. The panorama was wonderful, but to me the landscape got more and more interesting the closer to our own noses we listened and looked. After we had stood in silence for a while, an unmistakable and bloodcurdling racket commenced only a few yards away. The creatures making the din were completely hidden in the dense oilseed stems and they knew it – fox cubs shrieked and chittered uninhibitedly as they chased and play-fought in the dense foliage. It was tantalising to know they were so close and yet we stood no chance at all of actually seeing them.

Hidden in the fence posts and rotton tree boles that ringed our side of the field we could hear the thin “seep-seep” of baby birds on the nest. Furtive rustlings became detectable as we allowed ourselves to quieten and absorb the goings on of our immediate surroundings. A nettle patch revealed this nest of elegant, spiky black caterpillars. After a frantic larval stage of gorging on nettles they will become peacock butterflies. These lovely insects happily frequent gardens and are commonly found on nectar rich garden flowers such as buddlea. You will only get them in numbers if there is a thriving, undesturbed nettle patch nearby, so butterfly lovers – spare a sunny nettle patch in a “wild” part of your garden and you will be richly rewarded for giving our native creatures a home.

Upon close examination it became clear that their habit of sticking together for protection might not always work. Wizened, discarded shells that were most certainly not the result of a moult were clearly visible among the grazing catties. An even closer look revealed one possible culprit…

A spider, carrying her perfectly round silk basket of eggs. The exhausting task of hauling this extra load around might result in her taking up home near a readily available supply of caterpillar snacks – she is eating for two thousand, after all. A little closer to the human scale of things, these common hogweed flowers are a sure sign of high summer. They take their name from their distinctly piggy aroma which does not seem to put off the hover flies that adore them so.

Get a little closer to these common hedgerow plants and they become, with a little imagination, an exotic location in themselves. Each umbel bears many tiny, tightly packed dull white flowers which overlap one another, getting smaller and smaller as you go toward the centre of the umbel. Get up very close and you will see hoverflies landing with the precision of a jump jet pilot, and suddenly you are looking at another planet, a science fiction wonder where metallic striped space ships are docking on a floating organic latticework, loading their mysterious cargos and vanishing, Zip! into the unknown.

Related posts:

Share/Bookmark