It was a cloudless morning, perfect for a walk around Thursley Common to look for dragonflies, other insects, birds, and bog flowers too.
The bog pools were surrounded by Marsh Orchids in lovely purple bloom.
A few lizards, one with a regrowing tail, sunned themselves on the boardwalks.
Masses of Black-Tailed Skimmers chased aggressively about the pools, along with a few blue damselflies and some Black Darters. Some Large Red Damselflies warmed up on the heather, well away from the pools.
Lizard regrowing tail
A Curlew called (or is it sang?) its beautiful, melancholic mating cry, flying high, slowly, and holding out its wings in a distinctive curve: something like a small heron, but with its incredible long downcurved bill, and tail feathers spread showily. It’s a rare delight, not least because Thursley is the only place Curlews breed for many miles around.
Stonechats on dead tree
Stonechats sang their brief grating song from conspicuous viewpoints all over the common, sometimes in little family groups.
A Tree Pipit gave a fine display of its song flight from a tall tree.
On a lake filled with Yellow Water-Lilies at the edge of the common, gigantic Carp lurked and splashed at the surface, and Downy Emeralds chased, seeming club-tailed.
Downy Emerald (I only got this distant reflection)
A Green Tiger Beetle whirred on to the path – a very strange flight jizz, but easily recognized once close enough.
Green Tiger BeetleScorpion Fly
Perhaps the most tantalizingly lovely insect of the day, however, was this Beautiful Demoiselle, shining iridescent Lapis Lazuli blue against the delicate pale green of a birch sprig.
Lonesome Splendour: looking up Wastwater to Wasdale Head, with Yewbarrow on left, Scafell and the Wasdale Screes on right
It was a delight to be able to take some time in the almost miraculously preserved Lake District, the landscape seemingly unchanged from a century ago. The real changes are in the main carefully hidden away: cunningly concealed caravan parks, sensitively expanded hotels and guest houses, visitor attractions built of grey slate and tucked behind walls or trees. One change cannot be hidden: the narrow lanes carry twice, no, four times the traffic of thirty years ago, and it travels at murderous speed. Some of the young men in their shiny red cars race along the few straights and around blind bends, trusting and assuming (without thought) that the other driver knows the road as well as them, has the same speed of reaction, and will have space to pass. Given that the other driver may well be a foreigner in a slow, bulky camper van, or old and frail, or talking on the phone, or tired, drunk or just not quite as perfect as the young bloke in his speed-wagon, this may not be justified. Pedestrians and cyclists, too, take their lives in their hands. The park authority ceaselessly balances the conflicting pressures: facilities for the millions of visitors, landscape, wildlife, jobs, houses, schools and shops for the residents, car parking (as pricey as any city in the most popular spots). They have done an admirable job.
Round-Leaved Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, and Sphagnum bog mossGlaciated Landscape: Pavey Ark above Stickle Tarn
The marvellously clean landscape of rock, grassland and glacial lakes appears so fresh on a fine day that it hardly seems feasible: it is sharper than a diorama illustrating geomorphology, and much more beautiful.
Foxglove in a Lake District landscape, Tarn Hows
Sometimes the common flowers surprise us with their beauty. These foxgloves stood proud and tall in their hummocky landscape.
Map Lichen, Rhizocarpon geographicum, on slate
The lime-green of the geographic or map lichen forms delightful maps of imaginary continents on the grey slate.
Cladonia floerkana lichen among moss, Tarn Hows
The artist Maurits Escher admired the apparently simple form of mosses and ground-living lichens like the gorgeously coloured Cladonia floerkana: but he quickly realized how complex they were when he started to draw them.
Two Common Sandpipers at Wrynose Pass
I was happily surprised to see these Common Sandpipers flying about and calling loudly: I really hadn’t expected to see them away from both forests and sizeable bodies of water: clearly, they don’t need much.
Goosander female with six spotted ducklings, River Rother, Grasmere
The Goosander is almost a rarity, breeding in not many thousands in Britain; but it is not shy, as this family seen from the bridge over the Rother in Grasmere demonstrates. The ducklings showed off their striking spotted pattern.
Welsh Poppies in WasdaleNatural Pattern: a rock with mosses and Map Lichen on Yewbarrow
On Yewbarrow in Wasdale, we enjoyed the views of lake and mountain, and glimpsed a Golden-Ringed Dragonfly: not really mistakable for anything else, the size of an Emperor Dragonfly and strikingly black-and-yellow with incomplete rings.
Ghostly tree covered in caterpillar tent silk, dotted with telltale frass
Back at our guest house, Marsh Tits visited the bird feeders, almost as relaxed as the resident Blue Tits. On the Cumbrian Way, walking down to the pub at Skelwith Bridge, we saw this extraordinarily ghostly tree, leafless and covered all over with silk, lightly decorated with caterpillar frass. The poor tree had been totally defoliated by the tent caterpillars. Since I doubt the Gypsy moth has reached the Lake District yet, this might be a Processionary moth, perhaps.
Foxgloves, growing in a shady corner of the garden
My foxgloves are beautifully in flower. They began around the 11th of May and are now in full bloom. Most are dressed in traditional purple with the insides of the “gloves” spotted deep purple in white areas, as if the pigment had been dragged together into clumps. Some are in unspotted white: creamy when closed, dazzling greenish-white in full bloom. This is seemingly a naturally-occurring variation, with perhaps a single mutation preventing pigment development.
Nothing extraordinary there? The clue is the date. Back in the 1940s in Dorset, John Stuart Collis calmly states that Foxgloves come out in August.
The odd science of Phenology tracks the dates when natural events occur in different years, thereby building up an accurate picture of changes in many species. The idea is seen in one of the classics of natural history, Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1789), which includes observations of the first Swallow to arrive, and so forth, and in some editions actual tables of phenological observations. These are described as “A comparative view of the Naturalist’s Calendar as kept at Selborne in Hampshire by the late Rev. Gilbert White MA and at Catsfield near Battle in Sussex by William Markwick Esq FLS from the year 1768 to the year 1793.” For the record, White notes Foxglove from May 30 to June 22; Markwick notes the same species from May 23 to June 15.
So in this case the anomalous datum looks more like Collis’s than mine. Still, flowering does seem to be earlier; explanations could include that London is warmer than the countryside, that plant varieties may differ, and climate change.
Mind you, even Gilbert White would have had a hard time recording the phenology of the Nasturtium this year. Without a winter frost, which usually kills them in December, the plants survived all through the winter, and have remained in flower essentially continuously. “1 January—31 December”, I suppose.
Nasturtium, all natural. The colour is as the camera saw it, and the water droplets are rain or dew, where nature left them.
The love of Nature is deep in England. And I think that what is behind this love is the instinct that Nature has a secret for us, and answers our questions. Take that foxglove over there… It stands singly where there had been such a wonderful display of bluebells that it then looked as if a section of the sky had been established upon earth… That foxglove with its series of petal-made thimbles held up for sale to the bees, puts me at ease upon the subject of — progress. It is quite obvious that the foxglove cannot be improved… The fact is we get perfection in this form and in that form… There is no point in our gazing raptly into the future for paradise if it is at our feet.
—John Stewart Collis, The Worm Forgives the Plough. Vintage, 2009. page 253.
