June Nature Notes
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| • A pearl bordered fritillary on the flower of a blackberry. |
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| • Longhorn beetle on an oak leaf. |
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| • A noble oak affords shade from the heat of a June
day. |
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| • Purest white flowers of elder. |
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| • Sunkissed greenery. |
BY STEWART BEER
Email: stewart.naturalist@btinternet.com
JUNE is blessedly compensating for the cold, wet and wind-blasted
days and weeks that usurped the Maytime. Then trees lost a not inconsiderable
weight of bud cases and tender young leaves.
Apart from the absence of pollinating insects, smaller plants didn't
fair so badly. Indeed, from the middle of May to the beginning of
this month, there was a luxuriance of cow parsley along the waysides
(now superseded by hogweed and hemlock water dropwort). However,
times were undoubtedly difficult for birds and insects, although
songbirds, particularly blackbirds and song thrushes, continued
to sing with unbending verve.
Did any readers hear the calling of a cuckoo on the eastern Gorwell/Yeo
Valley area of Barnstaple, on Sunday April 23, just after 5am? I
heard it, yet back in my country parish another season goes by without
a note from the wandering voice! In my boyhood the call of the cuckoo
was integral to the pastoral scene of those times - the past is
a different country …
The poor conditions of late spring brought many of our breeding
garden birds back to the bird table. I know my garden became unusually
full at that time with several species taking away beakfuls of seeds
and crushed peanuts to their broods. Pairs of nuthatches, chaffinches,
goldfinches, greenfinches, blue tits, dunnocks and blackbirds were
daily visitors. Surprisingly, starlings were conspicuous by their
absence - the pair nesting under the eaves of a nearby property
preferring to supply what appeared to be solely wireworms to their
young. Four pairs of jackdaws, nesting in the church tower a hundred
yards distant, scooped away great quantities of food every day for
a fortnight and more. The colony of house sparrows from the eaves
of the former school house next door relied almost totally on the
food I put out for them during the worst days. The rearing of the
young by the often bedraggled parents proved successful for now
the fledgling sparrows are also following their parents and, rather
than feed themselves, are still expecting to be fed!
Magpies are normally wary of human presence, but on the outskirts
of West Down a pair annually nest in an ash tree growing on the
boundary hedge-bank just fifteen yards from the living room windows
of semi-detached houses!
The flowering of cotoneaster has also been a life-saver to more
diminutive life-forms, namely the buff-tailed bumble bees. During
a break in the prolonged rainstorms on May 25 a cotoneaster plant
growing up and over a high wall was covered with the workers of
bombus terrestris. The previous year honey bees had homed in on
the plant and at first I thought it was the case again for the humming
was hive-loud. But no, upwards of a hundred of the small workers
were busily gathering pollen from the pink cymes. Cotoneaster is
a good plant for wildlife throughout the seasons.
Now the season is in full swing with a giddy array of plants and
insects to relish. I photographed the pearl-bordered fritillary
and the longhorn beetle rhagium mordax on June 3 . The butterfly
will soon be gone but the beetle will be around until July. Nature
is all about succession during the full months of the year.
Contact Stewart Beer at: stewart.naturalist@btinternet.com
• Stewart’s anthology An
Exaltation of Skylarks, now with four colour plates added,
is published by SMH Books ISBN 978-0-9512619-7-2. It can be ordered
from all good bookshops, or directly from www.smh-books.co.uk
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