A Buzz in the Meadow Read online

  The various mice are nervous, for barn owls roost in the attic, leaving huge piles of pellets, which are consumed by the grubs of clothes and skin moths, species adapted to feeding on the desiccated remains of animals. There is also another, mysterious beast that they should fear. Some years ago I installed some Velux windows in the old roof, and soon afterwards noted the footprints of a largish animal on the glass. I also found pungent, elongated scats, sometimes on the drive to the house, and once on an inside windowsill. Whatever this beast was, it could take on formidable prey; on one occasion I found a wing and the head of one of my barn owls strewn in the attic. On another occasion, when on an early-morning excursion, my young boys found a bleeding chunk of flesh on the drive, all that remained of a large whip snake. From its width I would guess the snake had been a good one and a half metres or more long, but everything had been consumed, apart from a fifteen-centimetre section of its midriff. The beast took on a mythical status in the family, with the children speculating wildly as to what it might be, and it was many years before I finally worked out what it was.

  Let me take you for a stroll. We’ll start at the top of the drive, to the north of the house, by the big horse-chestnut tree. It is late afternoon, towards the end of May, and the tree is in full bloom, the cones of frothy cream flowers attracting scores of bumblebees, whose bustling dislodges petals from the older flowers that rain down upon the drive. We amble down the old tarmac drive, its warm surface cracked by tree roots pushing through from beneath, sparse tufts of crested dogstail grass sprouting from the crevices. On the left we stop to admire the wood-ant nest, a gentle dome of cut, dried grass stems thronging with large chestnut-coloured ants. The nest has been in the same place for ten years now, to my knowledge. My boys love to watch and poke the ants, and occasionally, I suspect, they throw them insect prey. The slightest disturbance causes ripples of activity to spread across the nest as the ants release alarm pheromones warning of danger. The ant trails radiate from the nest across the tarmac, with incoming ants carrying all sorts of fragments of plants and insects to feed to their brood in the nest.

  Beyond the ants’ nest on our left is a thick hedge of gorse, five metres or more across. A male stonechat perches on the highest point, his trademark call sounding very much like two dry pebbles being struck together. The female is no doubt sitting on her cup-shaped mossy nest somewhere deep in the gorse thicket, incubating her clutch of sky-blue eggs. Peering through the thick gorse hedge, to the east of the drive we can just see my orchard: fifty well-spaced young apple trees that I grew from pips. The largest are now nearly four metres tall, and two of the trees bore fruit for the first time last year. My three boys are chasing butterflies fifty metres away amongst the trees, the two eldest, Finn and Jedd (now aged twelve and ten) leading the way through the long grass, chattering excitedly, each armed with a huge kite net. Behind them our youngest, Seth (aged three), is gamely battling to keep up, his white-blond shock of hair all that is visible of him amongst the greenery.

  On our right I point out a bee orchid, its single purple flower mimicking the smell and texture of a female bee and thus luring male bees to attempt to copulate with it. All they get for their trouble is a ball of pollen glued to their heads, but they must be foolish enough to make the same mistake again or the bee orchid’s strategy would not work.

  Further down, the drive is shaded by a line of large oaks on the right, and a mix of elm and oak on the left. Brittle brown acorns from last autumn still litter the ground. The elms are repeatedly attacked by Dutch elm disease, which quickly kills the trees once they reach six or seven metres in height, but luckily the trees spread rapidly by suckers, so there is a constant crop of new saplings coming up. A territorial male speckled wood butterfly dashes up from a warm sunspot on the drive to chase away a brimstone that has dared to enter its domain.

  I love the French names for butterflies, compared to which many of the English names are a little unimaginative; for example the English orange tip is simply descriptive, while the French l’aurore – the dawn – is rather more poetic. What do we call a speckled butterfly that lives in woods? The speckled wood, of course, while to the French it is le Tircis, named after a shepherd in a seventeenth-century fable by Jean de La Fontaine. A few years ago I hit upon the idea of organising a guided butterfly walk at Chez Nauche for any interested locals. I sent posters advertising the walk to the mayor of Épenède, the local village, and also to the mayor of nearby Pleuville, asking for them to be displayed on the village noticeboard. I bought lots of lemonade for my visitors, and boned up on all the French names of butterflies and other insects, although I was somewhat worried that my inability to say much else in coherent French might be a handicap. On the day of the event I waited nervously outside the house, but no one arrived at the allotted time. Ten minutes late a car at last drew up; an English lady, and her young daughter, who lived nearby. I had not met them before, but was happy to take them for a walk in the meadow, though also a little disappointed by the turnout of the French contingent. Perhaps chasing butterflies is an eccentric English activity, and not something that appeals to French country-dwellers. It is certainly true that membership of conservation charities such as the RSPB and Butterfly Conservation is far higher in the UK than in any other country in the world. We had a pleasant walk, spotting bumblebees, butterflies and grasshoppers. Towards the end of the walk I took us past an old piece of corrugated tin that I had laid out on the edge of the field. Snakes love to bask under tin sheeting, and I had a pretty good idea that there would be something dramatic underneath, to form the perfect finale to the walk. Sure enough, there was a sizeable Aesculapian snake underneath, which I managed to grab with a flourish. We walked back to the car so that the mother could take a photo of her daughter stroking the snake, and finally we let it go. I hadn’t quite anticipated what happened next. The snake shot under their car, then climbed up into the still-warm engine. We spent the next hour with the bonnet up, trying to find it – without success. In the end the poor lady and her daughter had to drive away reluctantly with a snake somewhere in their car. I very much hope they all survived the journey.

  Returning to our stroll, we are coming towards the end of the drive. On our left is a rectangle of stout walls – the Alamo, as my father has christened it – all that remains of a very large barn. When I bought Chez Nauche this barn was in a terrible state, with gaping holes in the roof and the beautiful old oak frames well rotted. I couldn’t afford to repair it, so I took the roof off and sold the remaining half-decent timbers to a reclamation yard. The old walls provide a suntrap for lizards and warmth-loving butterflies; teasels and thistles sprout up in profusion from the stony ground; and whip snakes are common amongst the stones and weeds.

  On our right is a small hollow, overgrown with blackthorn and ash, once a shallow seasonal pond, which I mistakenly filled in with building rubble. I have since been slowly clearing it out, in the hope that the newts that once lived there will return.

  Let us strike right off the drive, past the pond and across the open meadow. This western side of the meadow is where I have set up a large, long-running experiment to try to increase the numbers of flowers. I sowed squares of meadow with yellow rattle, eyebright, bartsia and meadow cow-wheat, all partially parasitic plants that sap the strength from nearby grasses by tapping into their roots and sucking up nutrients. Suppressing the grasses leaves a little more room for other flowers, or so the theory goes. The rattle is in full flower: a pretty annual with small yellow flowers tipped in purple, which has established itself in little clumps across the experimental plots. It is too early to say whether this has increased the number of flowers, but in any case the meadow looks pretty good at this time of year. After ten years without any fertilisers or pesticides, quite a lot of wild flowers have established themselves. The main grasses are cocksfoot, Yorkshire fog and false oat grass, large and dominant species that tend to smother all else, but over time they have been declining and have been partly rep
laced by the finer, less aggressive grasses typical of a proper hay meadow: fescues, sweet vernal grass and meadow foxtail. Amongst the grasses, some flowers have become common: wild geraniums, forget-me-nots, ragwort, white campions, hawkbit, clover and meddicks, to name but a few. Some of them tend to occur in distinct patches, either because their seeds do not spread readily or perhaps because some subtle variations in the soil properties suit them better in some places than others.

  As soon as we leave the drive we enter a patch thick with cinquefoil, a low-growing, prostrate relative of the rose, with simple yellow flowers, much like those a child might draw. Its creeping, horizontal stems snag our feet as we walk through. Five metres later the cinquefoil ends abruptly, and we encounter a dense clump of meadow vetchling, a pea with twining tendrils with which it clambers up the taller grass stems. Amongst the close vegetation we hear the high-pitched shrieks of shrews fighting; these tiny but voracious predators live their short lives at a hectic pace, eating constantly and fiercely defending their territory against one another. After the vetchling, a dense patch of red clover is thick with long-tongued bumblebees, garden bumblebees and common carder bumblebees, gathering its protein-rich, toffee-coloured pollen and sweet nectar. Then we move into a dense sward of lady’s bedstraw, a fragrant spreading plant with tiny, dark-green leaves and heads of abundant but minuscule yellow flowers. In days gone by, before comfy sprung mattresses, it was used as sweet-smelling bedding – whence, of course, it gains its name.

  We are walking south-west, down a gently increasing slope, with the old farm buildings of the tiny hamlet of Villemiers visible on the other side of the valley a kilometre away. The Transon meanders in the bottom of the valley below, a lazy trickle of a stream with small muddy pools at intervals, home to numerous coypu, a South American rodent that escaped from fur-farms long ago and has found a home-from-home in the many rivers and lakes of the Charente. They are semi-aquatic, resembling beavers in all but their long, rat-like tails. They can be something of a nuisance, as they are great burrowers, creating huge holes in the banks just on the waterline, which does little harm in a stream, but can be disastrous in a man-made lake, since their burrows can puncture the dam.2

  Away to our left, the plaintive cry of the wack-wack bird can be heard in the distance. My boys and I have spent many hours trying to stalk this beast, which I have only ever heard at Chez Nauche. It calls most days in spring and summer, usually from the south-east, a nasal wack, wack with a distinct but brief pause between the notes. There only ever seems to be one of them. Whenever I try to do an impression of it to my knowledgeable ornithological friends, they laugh and tell me it is a duck, but that is simply my inability to replicate the noise. We have crept towards the source of the noise through the long grass of the meadow. It usually sounds as if it is coming from a large oak tree on the boundary, but whenever we get close it ceases to call, and we see nothing fly away. The boys speculate that it is some dramatic creature, brightly coloured and a metre or so tall, with a crest and a long sharp beak, but if so, it must be very good at hiding. I wonder whether it may not be a bird at all, but some peculiar species of frog. Perhaps one day we will find out.

  The meadow becomes drier as we continue on to the steep south-facing slope at the southern end, and ribwort plantain becomes common underfoot. This is an unspectacular little plant, with strapline leaves and inconspicuous brown flowers from which dangles a fringe of yellow anthers, but the leaves are the favoured food plant of the lovely Glanville fritillary. This butterfly is named after Lady Eleanor Glanville, one of the very few female lepidopterists of the eighteenth century. She first described this pretty species, which she found near her home in Lincolnshire. Glanville fritillaries have long since disappeared from most of the UK; they are now found only on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, but it is one of the most common butterflies at this time of year at Chez Nauche, and we disturb dozens from the grass as we walk. They have an orange-and-black chequerboard upper side to their wings, their creamy underside being streaked attractively with orange and dotted with black spots. Their bodies are furry, giving them a rather cuddly appearance. I bred Glanville fritillaries in my bedroom as a child, after buying the pupae from Worldwide Butterflies, and I have always been rather attached to this species. The caterpillars are unusual in that they are gregarious; the female lays large mounds of yellow eggs, which hatch into velvet-black caterpillars, which live together on plantain in silken webs that they spin. Once they have consumed the plant on which they are laid, they somehow agree that it is time to depart and set off in a convoy to the next one.

  We are approaching a deep-sunk green lane that marks the western boundary of the meadow. A dense stand of oak, hazel and blackthorn lines both sides of the lane. We push through a slight gap in the hedge, our legs getting scratched by the terrifically spiky butcher’s broom that thrives on the hedge bank. In the lane it is shady and sheltered; on hot days flies congregate here to escape the heat. I have brought us through to see the wood whites, delicate, ghostly-white butterflies that patrol slowly up and down the lane, their flight so weak it seems they may expire at any moment. This is another species that is in precipitous decline in the UK for reasons that are not well understood, but here they seem to be flourishing. We turn left down the lane, continuing steeply downhill to the Transon, a stream that is just beyond my land. There is a small pool before it gurgles under the lane, and a swarm of shiny whirligig beetles gyrates crazily on the surface. I’ve often seen grass snakes hunting fish and tadpoles in the shallows here, but there isn’t one today. Just as we turn to retrace our steps a male demoiselle flits by, its metallic blue body glinting in the sunlight. This is the king of damselflies, larger than other European species and by some margin the most spectacular. Aside from the male’s iridescent body, its wings are decorated with large splashes of blue-black pigment, so that they flash with every wingbeat. The females are a slightly more understated iridescent green, and a pair sitting together, as they often do, is a breathtaking sight.

  We walk a little way back up the hill and cut back through the hedge into the south corner of my meadow. We climb up a steep slope, heading north-east, towards a small tree standing in isolation. It is a walnut that I planted there some six years ago, now grown to about three metres in height. One day it will be large enough to make a splendid shady picnic spot, and perhaps also provide walnuts to eat. On the slender grey trunk there is a praying mantis, newly adult, its triangular head following our every movement, as if sizing us up as potential prey. In green vegetation praying mantises are nearly impossible to spot, but this one has chosen the wrong place to perch. Its powerful forelegs are folded beneath it, their rows of sharp spines locked together, poised to strike out in the blink of an eye, should an insect be foolish enough to come too close. If attacked by a bird, the mantis can flash its wings open, revealing large eye-spots, designed to frighten into retreat all but the boldest bird.3

  Just beyond the walnut is a gentle hollow perhaps twenty metres across. Here the grass is thick with wild basil, thyme and mint, which create a heady aroma. Sitting down, you cannot be seen from anywhere; it is a wonderful place to relax and soak up the sights, smells and sounds of the meadow. A male stag beetle drones past; they are common at this time of year. These huge beetles are clumsy fliers, encumbered as they are with massive jaws for wrestling with rivals for a mate. They are so slow that it is easy to snatch them out of the air, but I leave this one be.

  From here we head east, the meadow falling away again into a gentle valley, at the bottom of which is a small spring. The spring was once the main water supply to the farm. French water is metered and amongst the most expensive in the world, so Monsieur Poupard used to pump all of his water up from the spring to a rusty old tank in one of the small barns, thereby avoiding having to pay for it. A well has been dug into the ground, lined with stones, and from this a trickle of water runs south towards the Transon. I have allowed scrub to establish around the spring, mainly blackt
horn and brambles, which provide a glorious impenetrable tangle in which many birds nest. Slightly downstream I planted yellow flag irises, which have taken well and sprout their waxy leaves and stems well above the encroaching brambles, their flamboyant flowers a draw to bumblebees.

  Beyond the irises we come to a pond held back by a clumsy stone-and-clay dam, my attempt to create more habitat for aquatic wildlife, of which I will tell you more later. We walk across the top of the dam and up the other side of the valley, still heading east. On our right, the boundary is marked by huge mature oaks, alive with the bubbling, liquid song of whitethroats. When we reach the top of the hill we are near my eastern boundary. We sit down, looking back over the valley and the spring, to the cluster of ochre buildings that make up Chez Nauche, casting long shadows towards us as the sun falls behind them to the western horizon. A swallowtail butterfly soars past, the first of the year, a magnificent yellow-and-black creature, the hindwings of which are decorated with blue-and-red eye-spots and long streamers. It is a male, searching eagerly for a newly emerging female with which to mate. The crickets, which fell silent as we approached, edge back to the mouths of their burrows and recommence their singing. Summer is near, and for insects this is the time for sex and nectar, sunshine and flowers. It is my favourite time of year, and my favourite place, where nature runs riot and all is right with the world. Well, almost. If only I’d remembered to bring a couple of cold beers. And perhaps a nip of cheese.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Insect Empire

  27 July 2007. Run: 41 mins 15 secs. It is another beautiful day in paradise. People: one old man delivering bread from his white Citroën van in Épenède. Dogs: 8 – a personal record, including a huge Pyrenean mountain dog in Le Breuil, with a bark that made the earth shake. Fortunately it seemed friendly. Butterfly species: 16. Black-veined white butterflies are plentiful this year, braving the spiky flowers of teasels along the drive to gorge on the rich nectar; for mysterious reasons, this butterfly species died out in the UK more than 100 years ago. As I sit, getting my breath back, I can see a Montagu’s harrier hawking above the newly cut top meadow, hunting for voles – a magnificent, graceful, but angular bird with slate-grey, black-tipped wings.