More lockdown delights

It's incredible how the natural world is just carrying on amidst all this Covid-19 lockdown business. A swarm of flies has been ignoring the two metre social distancing thingy, dancing around in the air above our rosemary in the back garden. There seemed to be more there today, so word is obviously getting around. I think they're lesser house flies, which must mean they are preparing an onslaught on the District's poultry houses.

Moths seem to be in their Spring lull since the Orthosias declined to a handful a night, but we did get a nice Powdered Quaker in the trap last night and I found a bonus Angle Shades on a nettle during my morning stroll around the garden, mug of tea in hand. I also found in the trap this morning a nice little chafer which I think was a summer chafer, but it seems far too early for this (it is named solstitiale after all) and was perhaps less hairy than the images in my book. It might be something else. It fell on the grass and melted away before I could photograph it, so I will have to hope for another before attempting an ID. Still no Rose Chafers seen in the garden, despite the Choisya being in near full bloom. I had hoped they might appear slightly earlier due to the good weather.

We took a lunchtime walk. The stockpiled brash on Norton Hill, where we heard a hedgehog at dusk a couple of days ago, today had a swarm of bees enjoying the shelter it afforded from the strong easterly breeze. They were too busy and quick to be identified, but I think they were a Lasioglossum species of some sort. To the south we looked longingly at Castle Hill LNR, which is mostly out of bounds during the present lockdown.

The butterfly season appears suddenly to have moved on and looks promising for the next six weeks or so, providing the weather stays good. We saw our first Small Copper yesterday; today there was a fair amount of activity in the sheltered places. We saw Large Whites (2), Small Whites (9), Red Admirals (4), Small Tortoiseshells (2), Commas (2), a Holly Blue, some Nettle-tap moths which were fizzing around the herbage, quite a few Dock Bugs (30), Gooden's Nomad Bee and our first dragonfly of the season: a female Large Red Damselfly, which I managed to take a shaky snap of. 

Swallows seem to be arriving in greater numbers. We've been seeing odd ones for about a month, but a small group of five were swooping around the hedge line on our way back home. Plenty of humans were out and about too – far more than usual since the lockdown was imposed but, unlike the flies, they were at least maintaining an appropriate distance.

Castle Hill LNR from Norton Hill

Female Large Red Damselfy (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) at Rookery Hill

Bishopstone Boxing Day-break

Daybreak on Boxing Day. Cool, calm air; a sky mostly clear of cloud. That restful feeling of the morning after the night before. The wind and rain delivered by Storm Barbara on Christmas Day had skimmed past and the world was sleeping in. As the sky lightened from the east above The Rookery, long streaks of cloud lit up like glowing embers on logs rekindled by the approaching sun.

Something was passing with the Rooks. They were up and abroad early. As the dogs and I made our first pass of the trees, they returned above us making enough noise to scare away the spirits of the dwindling dark and with them the fears of the long winter night. The world was theirs again. The tawny owls were silent; the jackdaws nowhere to be seen.

The rooks were still at it when we passed by on our way home. I paused and watched them in the throes of what could have been the corvine equivalent of our Boxing Day hunts - all excitement and chatter as they rode the canopy, breaking the surrounding silence. I put aside the automatic enquiry of what was happening and why and just watched, enjoying the pell-mell.

Leaving the rooks to it, I followed the path homeward and their sound subsided. We reached the crossing of a holloway and its parallel hawthorn-dotted modern track which connects the hamlet of Norton with Foxhole. Here, by the line of hawthorns, a meditative moment. It is chilly - maybe 5° Celsius - and yet a cloud of winter gnats hung in the air, silent, rising and falling in waves, peaking and troughing as though the countryside was gently sleeping, breathing out, in, out, in.

These midges are  males, dancing to attract females. They hang around the protection of the hedge or in a state of torpor, emerging in low light when it is mild and quiet. It is mesmerising to watch them, trying to pick out an individual from the cloud and follow it as it rises and falls in a starling-like murmuration. Rise and fall, like breathing. It's still early. I'm the only person around. I have the world to myself. It's a good time to take a breather. To just be instead of be going somewhere. The midge-cloud shares its gift: a lesson in pausing and noticing the rythmic rise and fall of the breath, the ability to let everything else fall away and focus only on the self. Nothing matters beyond the hypnotic, rhythmic dancing cloud. Just breathe and be at one with the world.