Lockdown Delights 3/3

Extra domum

The lockdown must have played havoc with my naturalist friends’ fieldwork and surveys. Again, I have been untouched by this and am fortunate that my regular weekly butterfly transect starts around the corner from home. I’ve been able to incorporate the first few weeks of the transect walking season into my daily exercise. Orange-tip, Large and  Small Whites, Brimstone, Speckled Wood, Wall, Red Admiral, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma and Holly Blue have been seen, as well as an Emperor Moth, a Hummingbird Hawk-moth, a few dark-edged bee-fly (Bombylius major) and the best numbers to date of dotted bee-fly (Bombylius discolour). 

Sunset from Norton Hill

Evening walks have been especially well rewarded because almost everyone is at home. The wet meadows by the woodland edge at Bishopstone have been silent and empty. I snuck in a couple of nights ago as quietly as possible to see if a barn owl I have seen locally a couple of times might be roosting there. Sure enough, as I neared the beech trees along Duke’s Walk, a barn owl emerged from the tree line, silently. My dog Leo and I sat perfectly still and watched until it flew out of sight. 

Slipping out of the wet meadow and into the wood at dusk, we walked beneath the rookery without being noticed by the rooks and jackdaws above. The ground, strewn with dropped nesting material, was softened by rain during Friday night's thunderstorm. Being able to walk more or less silently up the woodland path allowed me to listen into a wider range of the rooks' and jackdaws' vocabulary: confiding clicks, whines and screeches instead of the usual alarm calls. The woodland path has ramsoms growing out of a patch of winter heliotrope at the bottom of the path, a small patch of native bluebell halfway up and, near the top, a hybrid native and Spanish bluebell.

After emerging from the wood onto the hill above Norton the familiar grunts and snuffles of a hedgehog were heard from a pile of vegetation which was stockpiled last June by the farmer. Earlier in the Spring I watched a Peacock emerge from its hibernaculum in the same pile.

This is a bizarre, unique time we find ourselves living through; a time in which love and respect have taken on new meaning and how the way we conduct ourselves around others makes the difference between health and illness, life and death. Our responsibility to loved ones and to people we might never even meet is critically important. The pace of life has slowed, our worlds have become smaller, but the bandwidth of our experience has widened. Our awareness of surroundings, including the natural world, as we slow down and tune into it, have become more vital. Despite the lockdown, nature has continued in its irrepressible way. Every day spent as a reprieve from the reality of modern life will be cherished however possible.

Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus vicaria), Denton Wood

Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus vicaria), Denton Wood

  

The author wishes to apologise for any Latin shortcomings.