It’s now been several weeks since I wrote my last report, and things have changed with a rapidity I hadn’t expected. I was away from the trail for the best part of 2 weeks whilst I enjoyed a delightful holiday in Croatia, and came back to find the freshness of June and the excitement of July replaced with the heavy, almost tired atmosphere of August. As the summer has progressed leaves and flowers which had once been vivid and full of life are now beginning to look worn and leathery, tinged with yellow and ragged from insects munching on them. The heat of this month makes one feel tired, lazy and reflective, and with the knowledge that the equinox and the beginning of autumn are only a month away, feelings of nostalgia come bubbling up, unbidden. Summer seems to have gone by impossibly fast, and the beginning of the next is far away. Have I made the most of it?
Of course these feelings are premature, as September and October are often delightfully warm and sunny months, golden and pleasant, a time for humans and wildlife to gather and store the last bounties of summer before winter sets in. The process has begun already, with green and common sandpipers wheeling over Hoveton Great Broad, peeping as they go, on the way to Breydon Water to stock up on the mud-based crustacean buffet before migrating south, avoiding the cold seasons that gives the UK such a dynamic and interesting procession of nature. The red admiral and peacock butterflies which look so bright and fresh after emerging earlier in the month flap and glide lazily, the thick air supporting them but also pushing against them forcing them to rest on the accommodating, pink landing pads of hemp agrimony, refuelling by slurping up nectar with a long proboscis. They too are building up reserves of sugars, though for two very different reasons. The peacocks hibernate over the winter tucked away in hollow trees, sheds and outbuildings. They need sugar reserves to last months without feeding. The red admirals, however, undertake a long, energy intensive journey south to the Mediterranean, where they will breed again before their offspring heads back to our shores. But for this month at least the two can often be seen feeding on the same flower, a resident and a migrant with vastly different methods of survival supping from the same table.
Talking of flowers, a few weeks ago I identified what I think is the best named flower we have in Britain: enchanter’s-nightshade. This unassuming little plant grows in shady places, its tiny flowers held aloft like stars against a dark green sky made up of their almost heart-shaped leaves. The name is peculiar, as it is not related to the nightshade family, nor is it poisonous. But it does have a long history in folklore, and is reputedly the ingredient used by the enchantress Circe to turn the companions of Odysseus into swine in Homer’s epic, hence its Latin name Circaea lutetiana. Other common names hint at its magical properties: witch’s grass, wood-magic-herb, sorcerer of Paris, and for me these mysterious names make me giddy with excitement, conjuring up images of fantasy-woods filled with fantastical creatures and sinister characters. One of the things I love most about natural history are the human stories associated with wildlife, as these are the same plants and animals our ancestors were surrounded by throughout the whole of recorded history. The names just hint at the rich body of folklore behind many of our species, and the imagination can run wild with stories about plants like hound’s-tongue, candytuft, mountain everlasting, gallant-soldier, fiddleneck and feverfew, gypsywort, lady’s-tresses, lily-of-the-valley, ghost orchid, scurvygrass, sea-blite and shepherd’s-needle, sundew, twayblade, woundwort and Yorkshire-fog – to name just a few!