Unexpected things may happen by a river in time of drought. One hot August afternoon, many years ago, a certain fisherman was working conscientiously through the inactive time of the day. (Trout rise best at morning and evening.) Coming to a wide bed of tall reeds, he saw that some fairly big animal was moving in there; and a moment later a badger, whom the heat must have driven down to drink in broad daylight, pushed its way out and lumbered off up the slope to the near-by woods. Another day that same fisherman, working up a side-stream, came upon a swimming otter, which pulled itself out and bounded away, with a lithe leaping, across the water-meadow.
During the earlier part of the summer, the heron is a hard worker, and as long as he is undisturbed will often stab and paddle away in the running shallows for hours, coming and going to his nestlings with slow, heavy beats of his grey wings. In contract is the dashing speed of the swifts and swallows, which seem to fill the whole river with movement as they turn and flash, hunting fliers over the water; or break the surface for an instant (either sipping, or snatching a floating fly) before racing up and away. In the sedge hover the great dragonflies (four-engined dragonflies, we used to call them), green, and ochre, and glittering blue, with their great, panelled eyes and segmented bodies. Like hummingbirds, they hold themselves poised in the air, vanish as they dart away in a split second and then resume their tense stillness a few yards along the bank. In a shallow pool under the bank a great pike, two feet long, basks and dozes in the warm water. The water-mint has a sleepy smell; but if we are asleep, it is a sleep like Caliban’s. When we wake, we cry to dream again.
Richard Adams, Nature Through the Seasons, 1975
In the hottest and brightest season of the year, few think to turn to the darkest hours for their wildlife thrills. But there are those among us who welcome the night gladly, for it brings hidden delights. During the hours when humans sleep there are moths to be found. And whereas moths can be found during the day, even in winter, it is summer nights that give the best variety and spectacle.
It’s a labour of love, hauling the box out of the shed or from under the table, trying not to trip over the cables, debating where the best spot is to set it up, and worrying whether the neighbours will mind the glow. Getting it into position, we glance at the sky to see how long it will be before the daylight fades. When waiting for night to fall, a summer’s day can drag on terribly.
At last the sun has decided to sink and the day is drawing to an end. With a gleeful rubbing of hands and a final check that everything is in place, we plug in the cable and switch on. The garden again comes alive as the light of the trap spreads out into the neighbourhood. There’s a choice of lamps. Some prefer the soft blue that casts a magical spell across the flowers and hedgerow so that you almost expect delicate fairies to be flitting here and there. Others use the poetic sounding mercury vapour bulbs, whose light is stronger and more forceful, a brilliant white that is too bright to look at directly.
Morning dawns, the eastern horizon showing a pink bloom that spreads across the sky like a blush on a fair cheek. Oranges and yellows appear as well, until the sky settles into a lovely blue that promises a wonderfully sunny day ahead. Already we have been at the trap, rising from our beds with both eagerness and a touch of trepidation. What will be found in the garden, drawn to the light shining among the shadows.
Before the trap itself, we need to inspect the surrounding grass, its green stems hiding the first moth. Care is required. It wouldn’t do to step on anything. But at the same time, we’re excited and want to hurry. And there, clinging with its six legs to a grass steam, the first moth of the morning. No matter the species, it is always a thrilling and humbling experience.
Underestimated by many, moths are often forgotten. This must be set straight. Whilst butterflies are regarded as beautiful, moths are usually mocked, called ‘drab and boring’. Not so. Take the garden tiger moth, with its striking brown and white upper wings and, if lucky, you’ll see a glimpse of its hind wings which flash in a startling display of red and blue: a summer beauty if ever there was one. The other tigers are similarly resplendent in their contrasting colours and always brighten a moth trap. By day, their disruptive camouflage hides them from sight just like that of their namesakes in hot, distant jungles.
Continuing this theme of striking colours, an elephant hawk-moth will always fit the bill. Bright pink and green, it is the perfect antidote to the stereotypical brown ascribed to moths. As its wings vibrate and slowly warm in the morning sun, like a plane revving for takeoff, you feel a sense of wonder at this incredible sight.
It would be an omission not to mention the more subtle, yet astonishing patterns of yet more species: the buff-tip’s extraordinary twig-like camouflage; the metallic glow of the burnished brass and bold spot; and the intricate designs of the black arches and puss moth.
Of course, there are plenty of vivid moths to discover, but there are many who are rather more modest in their attire. Large yellow underwings are a common sight, seeming to take up all the available room and becoming the bane of many moth traps. They are worthy of praise even so, their humble overcoat concealing vivid yellow petticoats, which are revealed as they fly away.
It is easy to be fascinated by every species, through their colouration, shape or patterning. Even the names of many are poetic – lilac beauty, peach blossom, frosted orange, Kentish glory, true lover’s knot and fiery clearwing. Just reading their names stirs a sense of mystery and anticipation.
As the trap is slowly emptied, every moth’s identity is puzzled out and noted down as a record, to be sent off to join the vast archive of data. But in that moment, the data feels less important. Kneeling by the trap, there is delight as each one is plucked out of the depths and brought into the morning light. The moths try to make sense of the situation, their antennae quivering gently in time with the heartbeats of those looking at them. There is a brief sense of connection, despite the great differences between human and moth, until the moth takes flight. While some of its brethren skim beneath the sun, it will head for dark nooks and crannies, to hide away from the dangers of the day.
Megan Shersby, 2016
Sparrows Fringilla domestica. Sparrows congregate in August and September, and it is then that they feed in flocks in the standing corn, and are mistakenly destroyed for the mischief they do. Intelligent farmers are, however, now beginning to be aware that these, as well as most birds, do more good by the vermin they destroy in spring and summer than they do mischief by the grain and fruit they eat in autumn.
Thomas Furly Forster, The Pocket Encyclopaedia
of Natural Phenomena, published 1827
A voice of summer
In this one of all fields I know the best
All day and night, hoarse and melodious, sounded
A creeping corncrake, coloured like the ground,
Till the cats got him and gave the rough air rest.
Mechanical August, dowdy in the reeds,
He ground his quern and the round minutes sifted
Away in the powdery light. He would never lift
His beady periscope over the dusty hayseeds.
Cunning low-runner, tobogganing on his breast
He slid from sight once, from my feet. He only
Became the grass; then stone scraped harsh on stone,
Boxing the compass round his trivial nest.
– Summer is now diminished, is less by him.
Something that it could say cannot be spoken –
As though the language of a subtle folk
Had lost a word that had no synonym.
Norman MacCaig, 1962
Distant combines mutter across the fields, efficient yellow monsters biting down the corn. The harvest itself is a shifting dust cloud which forbids approach. Gone for good is the communal toil and the communal relief and joy which naturally succeeded it. Other than the farmer and his couple of men, no one any longer feels a thing about harvest, if the truth were told. Some old hymns and dec
orations a few weeks hence will do their best to resurrect some of the old emotion. And then no aching arms and backs in the pews – unless one happens to have been ringing the bells. Never again that hard corporate way of experiencing what, still within living memory, had been the common fate of any village, which was at this time to be made to work all hours so as to have bread.
For the best part of a fortnight the temperature has made the heatwave mark, thus making the grade in classic English-summer terms. Blue dawns, blue dusks, and in between a scorcher. ‘How do you like this?’ we say in passing, instead of Good morning. ‘Chalk it up,’ we say, ‘a summer at last!’ The horizon wavers and such creatures as stand in meadows pant gratefully in one another’s shadows. Not so mankind. For us a proper summer demands appropriate events and these, unlike harvests, are far from being left to a handful of participants. Thus through the August lanes we meander through the hot Saturday afternoon to Little Tey, where I am to open the church fête in the rectory garden. Accompanying us is Joachim from Berlin. It is his first fête and, although none of us know it as yet, following it will be his first cricket match. At two o’clock sharp Lady Laurie takes me to a familiar looking prop left over from the open-air performance of Romeo and Juliet a few days ago, the balcony no less, and at once I give sincere voice to the glories of the English fête which, even were it pouring cats and dogs, is never called off, never any different, indeed always gaining when in adversity. But to have a fête on a day like this, well what could be more perfect! Who could ask for more? Joachim, as yet innocent of fête drill and with a charitable amount of money burning a hole in his pocket, is pointed towards the cake stall. An unseemly rush to the cake stall always follows the morning speech, we advise him. Whereas, at a cricket match, whether on a burning or a freezing wicket, rush is not a word which applies.
We come across this idyll unexpectedly and even hardened rustics such as Ian and myself are momentarily stunned by the perfection which stretches before us. We meant no more than to show Joachim the wall-paintings in Copford church but our way is blocked by the kind of unconsciously formed masterpiece which all comes together when a heatwave wills it. Living figures almost still in their whites on a living green, a long lime avenue coolly leading to a great house and in the churchyard the grave of Eric Ravilious, a fine artist killed in 1942.
Ronald Blythe, Out of the Valley: Another Year at Wormingford, 2007
In an August Garden
Where, I asked, did the spiders come
suspended huge and still,
as skies cooled and the dews grew long,
backs printed with a skull?
Where were they when sun burned my crown,
I slashed the browning roses down?
I dare not lean through borders lest
I spin them out through homeless air
unlink their glistening nets.
This year, I saw. Crumpled and gold
crammed in a fold of leaf
small spiders swarmed across my hands,
spilled to the ground underneath.
Then came the first web, braving rain,
the centred spider, one brown grain.
So spiders do not come. They grow.
Wind shivers worn skin. Now I know,
I must ask where the spiders go.
Alison Brackenbury, 2013
How easy, in the electric light inside the cottage, with the windows so small, to forget the distance to the next house. Actually, no other buildings are visible from this one, and fields separate us from the one or two that are possibly somewhere near. Some shock in stepping outside the door, into the size of it. And surprise because – there is no wind at all. Clear night blue, some stars, a burst of crows cawing and moving out off the mountain, a bat or two, high or low, and an owl, very loud and close. Hard silhouette of the mountain. Small flies tickle. A drop falls in the water butt, which is now full. Small, pink clouds have left the sky to roll in the lap of Cader Idris. Stillness gets inside the holly. Here we are under the open Milky Way, under Vega, with the complete show, the Plough and Cassiopeia resting on the rim of our bowl, and one of the Perseids whipping silently to extinction towards the south east.
Pure postcard on Tuesday. Puffs of cloud overland, and thin cirrus over the sea. Hot enough in the wind to redden us all on Harlech beach. Into the dunes there, barefoot and careful for glass and harsh marram. A sudden glaucous blue patch, like litter, but it is cool sea-holly, tough and heavy. Rest harrow everywhere. Carline thistles, intricate, with glossy white-gold rays. Hollows floored with creeping willow, with catkins, and knotted pearlwort. The mashed urchin cases, chalky, broken, papery, in middens at the waterline. The leathery horseshoe prints, which are the eggs of the necklace shell, sunk in gleaming sand. A damp apple core, shoved into dry sand, with suggestions of sand in the teeth, grit in saliva, cut tongues, spit not thick enough. A crow opens and lifts off with a tilt from the wrack. Crab bits. Pin eyes. White legs. Closed claws. Flies whirl up and land on wrists, with offensive feet. Is there a smell of fish? Yet, also, there is a sudden sweetness in the air, or detected on the fingers. As you come out, the sea warms the back of your calves. Soft, ropey weed wraps your knees. There is the immaculately displayed beach and hills, the picked out houses, grey and white, the neat, complete, strong charcoal grey castle on its diagonally layered rock, where Bran the Blessed feasted for seven years as a decapitated head, while the birds of Rhiannon sang, far out to sea, yet close in the ear, and no song was more beautiful than that, since it came from the other world, the paradise over the water, and could bring back the dead. Heavy water on me, as I stand out, up to the neck, compared to that. The sudden slap and rush over my head from behind, of a swell I did not anticipate. Chance and inadequacy. And the hundreds of people, to the right, along the beach. Completely a matter of no dream or final joy. Burnt skin. Greasy pink. Elastic and horny soles. Rubber shoes. A fat youth smacking a girl’s legs with a yellow, plastic spade. Folding chairs in hands. Calves full of knotted veins. Loud voices which blemish the rush of water, and love between pieces of sandy meat. No repercussions out of the final air. Not so much a million, unseen relationships, as just a handful of responses. The ridges of the sand unexpectedly hard, banging the foot. The best mountains ringing us, reduced to glamour. Time should be a swift collection of light, clear empty glasses on a biscuit coloured shelf. The scent of the contents detached, adrift, somewhere a little way off, into which one might stumble, but it would be impossible to hold on or understand. Imagine the beach empty. The castle manned. The reduplicated houses gone. The empty shell of an urchin. Little, wafery skulls, which thought would darken and melt. Empty sockets, tilted to every corner of the sky. A sore neck touched by a ruggy shirt collar. Sticky hair. The breaks in sentences longer, this year. The eyes glazed in mid remark. The names vanish, and there is a yawn in the voice. What can string all this together?
August 1982
R. F. Langley, Journals, published 2006
I walk, brooding, through buttery sunshine that’s heavy in the air. A light wind clatters through the parched leaves of the trees, a shiver that seems to promise relief from the heat but which ultimately just fidgets and idles, toying with the lifeless air. Everything is wilting, fading.
My city-pale skin is already reddening from the exposure, tight and sore – but I hardly notice, distracted by the gorse prickling my elbows. The golden bushes look bright and inviting, but their treacherous flowers conceal thorny branches that threaten unsuspecting walkers. This route will almost certainly cause further grazes, but the only other path to the creek would mean wading through swathes of stinging nettles, so I plough resignedly onwards through the gorse.
As the wind picks up, the rattle of the leaves whisks my thoughts back to the train shuddering out of Liverpool Street and through the baked, gritted-grey London suburbs towards Essex, East Anglia’s gentle roll-and-tumble before the flat spread of the Fenlands. For a moment I see myself rumbling towards the salt air, the spatter
of mudflats dirtying and dissolving the coastline, and the under-appreciated, sun-bleached fields of wheat and barley.
This walk is the source of many childhood memories, a route patrolled by vigilant dog-walkers which takes you past the burnt-out ruins of an old church, up and over the hills and eventually down through green woods to the river. I skitter down the hill and away from the gorse, my feet automatically finding the right path. Rabbit warrens lace the hill to my left, felted by dandelions gone to seed, reminding me of the stories my mother would tell about the fairies who lived there. I pass a wide oak tree, driftwood hammered into its side to form a crude ladder. This doesn’t make the tree much easier to climb, as I well know, but the hollow in its branches is worth the undignified scramble, with space enough for two friends to perch comfortably at the top.
Crossing a stream almost completely hidden by swollen undergrowth, I pause to admire the few late poppies that are still preening on its banks. Smaller flowers are blooming too, tiny speckles of blue and white and yellow. Trefoil and brooklime and clover, harebell and catsear. Running through the names is comforting; it makes me feel at home here, anchored in this sunny patch of Essex. I drift on, past the fishing lakes, across the chalky road used only by lorries carrying gravel from the pits – and then I pause again, baffled and awestruck.
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