Although it was a bit late in the season for them, we saw half-a-dozen fireflies in the woods by the strada bianca (unmetalled road) and among the olive trees, half an hour or so after sunset.
I made no attempt to photograph birds, but a Hoopoe flew over the pool, and Turtle Doves cooed nearby. A Cuckoo called from far across the valley; a Song Thrush sang; a Green Woodpecker gave its laughing cry. White Wagtails flew up to the roof, and Italian Sparrows hopped about. Goldfinches twittered in the trees. A Sardinian Warbler raced for the cover of the trees, its black crown conspicuous; a Melodious Warbler sang from the woods. In the night, an owl called, it could have been a Scops Owl. And of course, Cicadas buzzed and Bush Crickets chirped all day long.
Well there are some things one just has to do, even if it means braving the traffic. Nightingales, once common all over the south of England, can now only be heard in a few special places, and Northward Hill is one of them. There are some others in the southeast, like Lodge Hill, and guess what, they want to build houses all over it. Better go and enjoy the birdsong while it lasts.
I was greeted by the song of blackbird, chaffinch, robin, song thrush, and wren as I walked in. A few ‘whites’ – large white, orange tip, green-veined white – skittered about as I reached the attractively rough scrub of hawthorn in full May blossom, blackthorn, wild pear, wild plum, and wild cherry, topped by the occasional whitethroat singing away scratchily.
Into the woods, with a handsome old cherry orchard on the right. Some of the oaks were straight out of Lord of the Rings, splendidly gnarled, knobbly, with massive trunks and holes to hide a good few goblins in.
And yes, sure enough, a nightingale obliged by singing its hesitant but amazingly rich and varied song from the thick cover. A little further, another; and a cuckoo kindly sang its unmistakable song from an oak almost in front of me, then with a ‘gok’ call flew, sparrowhawk-like, from the tree, a special sight.
Down to the hide overlooking the pool in the top photo; I wasn’t expecting more than a coot and maybe a mallard, but there were breeding lapwings chasing off the crows; breeding oystercatchers, and an avocet sitting with them; and a couple of solitary little egrets, stalking and stabbing at small fish or frogs. A redshank gave its wild teuk-teuk-teuk call and flashed its wingbar briefly.
Overhead a few swallows flitted about, and three swifts raced over the marsh.
The Hoo Peninsula is still a wild, spacious, lonely place, even with the swelling villages. You can see the Shard and Canary Wharf in the distance (some 30 miles); the river with its cranes and giant ships is ever-present; but the North Kent Marshes are special, as is Northward Hill with its fine old woods, still unspoilt for birds. Go and see it while you can.
I had the good fortune to get down to West Wiltshire in hot if sometimes humid summer weather.
It was a pleasure to find the Pyramidal Orchid in a flowery meadow near a town: despite the dog-walkers, the increasingly uncommon flowers were clearly spreading from a small patch across the meadow, which is mown annually.
Less pleasantly, there were next to no insects pollinating the flowers: we saw one Small Tortoiseshell, a fly or two, and one (white/buff-tailed) bumblebee. It was a stark contrast to the masses of bees and beetles I’ve seen on the reserve in London. Of course, in London there is now very little use of pesticides, and basically none on an industrial scale.
This year (2014) does seem to be particularly poor for butterflies. It was an extremely warm winter and a very wet and windy spring, so I wonder if the result has not been a bad spring for insect pests … and perhaps, whether England’s farmers have not sprayed insecticide especially heavily? It’s a question that could clearly be answered by someone. If the answer is yes, then our ‘useful insects’ have suffered very heavily as a consequence.
The next day we went to Cley Hill, a western outlier of the Salisbury Plain chalk downs, sticking up above the plain below the chalk escarpment.
In the short grass, full of lovely flowers – Sainfoin, Milkwort, Horseshoe Vetch – were Bee Orchids, and happily both bumblebees in this special place protected by the National Trust and Burnet Moths – mostly Five-Spot Burnet, with some Transparent Burnet too, quite a treat.
On the top of the hill, above the Iron Age earthworks, we came across a group of about five Wall Brown butterflies, all very tatty and worn: perhaps they had been blown across the Channel from France on the warm southerly wind that is accompanying this anticyclone (centred to the east). Nearby were a few Brown Argus, small butterflies in the Blue family: not uncommon in France, far from common in England. Their coloration may seem odd for the Blue family, but females of quite a few species are brown, contrasting with their bright blue males, so the genes for ‘brown’ are clearly available: perhaps it takes just one or a few genetic switches to turn on brownness in both sexes rather than in just one.
In several places on the hill, often on bare chalk paths or short grass, we saw the glowing blue and purplish blue of Adonis Blue butterflies, with their chequered wing borders. So we saw some rather special butterflies, though with the definite feeling that they are only just hanging on in the area.
The hill is also host to Chalk Fragrant Orchid, Pyramidal Orchid, Spotted Orchid and more: it was lovely to see them all, though we were moved on swiftly by an anxious pair of Skylarks circling rather low overhead, trying to get back down to their nest, clearly not far from where we were sitting. All around in the thorn bushes were Tree Pipits, singing away, with some twittering Goldfinches and one Yellowhammer, my first of the year: yet another species that was once commonplace in every hedge.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature