Summer on the wing

At the risk of being corny, I’m amazed at how time flies. Two weekends ago (it seems a lot longer somehow) I spent a perfect summer afternoon investigating a small bramble hedge in the middle of Hampshire. Who knows how long I spent there; I was utterly absorbed, but I do know that I could barely see past the butterflies. There were clouds of them! I was astonished at how intently they foraged, as many fiercely territorial species sat calmly together and drank deeply from the bramble flowers. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was the end of the breeding season; maybe it was just that they were getting drunk on good nectar, but I’ve never had so many butterflies sit so patiently for me.

First up was Polygonia c-album, or the Comma, a lovely amber coloured creature with attractively raggedy wings. Wondering how it got that name? Look at the bright marking on the underwing in the picture below – you should be able to tell!

At first I thought this Argynnis paphia, or Silver Washed Fritillary was a Comma too, but its larger size and calligraphic markings gave it away. Although this particular individual is very much past its best you can still see what an impressive and beautiful creature it is.

Let’s take a closer look at its wonderful green and orange furred body and spotted eyes

A little further along I found a Pyronia tithonus, or Gatekeeper – these sprightly butterflies were very active and though I saw many in the hedgerow this was the only one that would sit for me. I think it’s a female.

Time passed, and I realised that most butterflies had drunk their fill and moved on. I stalked the perimeter of the field and found nothing else that would sit still for me. Time to try the garden (we were staying at R’s parents house) which has many plants beloved of butterflies. Sure enough, there was an Aglais urticae, or Small Tortoiseshell on the lavender.

And the Gonepteryx rhamni, or Brimstone butterfly looked well on this striking blue flowered shrub. They particularly liked this plant, which seemed quite poetic given how the fizzy yellow of the butterfly looked against the improbably blue flower.

I had been anxiously hoping to find some Inachis io, or Peacock butterflies, having seen a colony of their caterpillars on nettles much earlier in the summer. They couldn’t all have been killed, surely? It seemed wrong that I hadn’t found an adult yet. Then, on a trespassing bramble I saw this…

What a showstopper! It was worth a bit of mild anxiety just to see this glorious insect – a male, fresh and glossy and presumably just emerged from its pupa.  I intend to write a little more about peacock butterflies, but I’ll leave that till another time.

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Everything But What I wanted

Summer is moving on apace and as I don’t want to waste a single sunny day when it crops up, I grabbed my camera and binoculars and cycled up the River Lee after the first good forecast this week. The idea was to go dragonfly spotting, something I’ve been aching to give a whole day to, but the day itself had other plans for me.

I had a particular spot in mind, Gunpowder Park, near Waltham Abbey. I’d been there many years ago and had a vague memory of myriads of dancing insects, so having for once a specific destination in mind I set off at a brisk pace.

The towpath was deserted, surprisingly so for such a lovely day. I usually cycle the towpath slowly, mindful of pedestrians and dogs, but on this occasion there was not another soul to be seen, and I sped along. Due to my haste I will have missed a lot – I know it – just from the tantalising things that I only glimpsed like the plums glossy and ripe and good spilled across the gravel as windfall, the skulking herons, the bright flash of wildflowers. The horse meadow with it’s bright garlanded hedgerow coaxed me to pull up and drink in it’s beauty, the scent of buddlea and wild sweet peas heady and intoxicating.

Usually I’d stop alongside those pylons to search for Little Owls (at one point I was seeing so many and so regularly there that I just called them “pylon birds”) but this time I was on a mission, and thinking that I could easily stop there on the way home I hurried by. A bank of honeysuckle flowers tempted me to pause, but I was uncharacteristically hasty in getting back in the saddle.

Ever feel like you’ve jinxed yourself?  All those things I told myself I’d stop and look at properly on the way back never did get looked at after all, which proves to me that being in a hurry to get anywhere is just a great big waste of NOW.  Hurrying discourages curiosity, blinkers us to the unexpected.  And on I sped, intoxicated with the swift breeze and the scrunch of gravel under my tyres. The towpath finally emerged from beneath the roaring M25, ducked under one more road and rolled out into parkland. Was this Gunpowder Park? I wasn’t sure, and a quick rummage in my saddlebag confirmed that I’d forgotten to bring a map. No problem! It would surely be signposted and besides, I could always ask for directions.

I got off the bike and strolled slowly along the riverbank in hope of spotting a dragonfly or two, but the wind was strong and I could not find the sheltered places where the dragons and damsels would be patrolling. Still, the river was beautiful, a slow, sinuous dancing river, and the weeds under the water swayed slowly like mermaids tresses. So many wildflowers I did not recognise! I got down on my belly to take pictures, to the mild alarm of strolling families who couldn’t see anything special about the clump of weeds I was prostrated by.  I’m truly glad I spent a bit of slow time here, because when I got up and got back on my bike in search of Gunpowder Park and dragonflies, I realised something wasn’t quite right. Oh no – no WAY. I had a puncture. Normally this would not be an issue but I think you can guess what else I’d forgotten. That’s right -  I’d set out to cycle miles out of London over relatively rough ground and not even brought a pump with me. And as I’d forgotten my map, I had no idea where the nearest train station was. Where was everybody? Now that I needed to ask directions the park seemed suddenly deserted. In search of directions or even a sign I followed the nearest road and stumbled upon a very unfriendly looking gated community on the edge of town; big ugly houses with big ugly cars parked in all the drives, completely sterile and unhelpfully deserted. But here I found a genuine and lovely surprise.

A flowering ornamental shrub was by some magic growing wild at the side of the path, and on it’s flowers danced an astonishing number of Painted Lady butterflies. The nectar laden flower heads tossed in the strong breeze and the insects clung to the blossoms determinedly, everything moving back and forth as if being pulled by a tide. Bees hummed industriously between the butterflies – everything was so intensely involving that the mystery of how I was ever going to get home seemed very far away.

I know most people in the UK have been seeing these lovely butterflies in great numbers since their mass migration here earlier this spring, but I’ve been singularly unlucky and seen hardly any. To find dozens of them all in one place was plenty consolation for the lack of dragonflies and the long, hot, unpleasant slog home.

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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.

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