Nature Journal: Week Eight

May 26th 2020
The late spring air feels thick with warmth. As soon as the light begins to fade, bugs, beetles, bats and moths start their nightly adventures. One creature in particular for us encapsulates the feeling of warm evenings, the may bug or cockchafer. Comically named and bizarre in appearance, the sight of the first may bug sluggishly buzzing around at dusk, crashing into lit windows and lanterns is a sure sign that summer is nearly here.
Here’s a particularly splendid specimen waving its feathered antenna as if to say ‘hello’.

May 28th 2020
⁣⁣Chasing a group of recently fledged blue tits with the camera as they flitted noisily and rapidly from branch to branch, tiny bundles of fluff and feather only half flying. They led me to a twisted oak bathed in golden light. I have been past this tree at least once a day for 9 years yet this was the first time I had truly seen it. I never got my photo of the fledglings, but a moment of clarity with the oak tree was a far greater reward. Any time I go into nature for something in particular I rarely find what I’m looking for, yet I never come home disappointed.

May 30th 2020
Wild roses cascade out of the hedgerows and woodland margins. Cultivated garden roses seem cheap and artificial in comparison.
Any effort to improve upon nature erases all traces of wildness and thus destroys the very thing that attracts us to nature in the first place.  

June 1st 2020
Marvelling at the complexity of honeysuckle flowers. Looking closer I found a crab spider lurking beneath in camouflage, the colour of glow-in-the-dark toys from my childhood.

June 4th 2020
Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) are in abundance this year. I once read that bees will shelter in foxglove flowers overnight; I don’t know whether this is true but I love the idea of bumblebees snuggling into cosy foxglove sleeping bags.