IT'S LIKE A HEATWAVE!

 

The relentless sun, bleaching energy into and out of the humidity of life. Brittle stems and blond seed heads of various grasses surge consecutively yet as one in the breeze. Only physical breaks curb the phenomenon, like the members' pavilion during a Mexican wave.

 

Bovine activity; eyelids, jaws, tails and constantly twitching ears; belies the presence of a myriad irritating flies, persistent at any break in the skin of the beast.

So it's that soul-sapping time when even a beautifully proportioned tench wouldn't entice me from my slumbering sweat.

Never do I feel less likely to get a bite than when the heat and brightness suffocate the urge to eat from the quarry.

"I've got no reason,
It's all too much"
...and, no, I'm not out to lunch but dear old desperate John springs to mind, and YouTube takes a temporary battering.

They were exciting times but give me frozen margins and a link-leger over this furnace any time, please.

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For three long years butterfly populations on my general travels seemed to be on the brink of collapse but this remarkable period is offering some kind of renaissance for these most attractive of unfathomably possible airborne insects

A few days ago The Lady Burton said there were, "About twenty", white butterflies over a patch of 'Michaelmas' daisies we'd left to run wild and, the next day, while I happened to be watering terminally non-existent tomatoes, before dusk I examined the daisies to find no less than nineteen green-veined whites roosting on the flower heads; all facing north, though I am uncertain what relevance that may have unless into the wind

I then found six others on a mature variegated Acer taking the total to an incredible twenty-five and this, with ringlet, small & large white, meadow brown, speckled wood, gatekeeper, small tortoiseshell, orange tip, brimstone, comma, holly blue and red admiral so far in our garden alone suggests a bumper year that might just indicate the triggering of a recovery through this extraordinarily hot early summer. That is without mention, yet, of the cinnabar moth caterpillars clothed in their wasp-like warning hoops on a solitary ragwort...

 

...and a huge strikingly mottled mullein moth caterpillar that sprayed brown goo when I deigned to gather it up

This migrant Silver Y moth gate-crashed the garage at dog relieving time and took-up residence on my fishing notes box.

The green-veined white, perhaps the third most  recognisable of our four white butterflies (large, small and wood completing the quorum), is a species that passed me by, literally and cognitively, until just a handful of years ago when one alighted on a weed in the margins of a Scottish Highland Oakwood car park and caught the eye of The Dog. Consequently it seemed a rarity but now they appear a very  common white. That of course has always have been the case.

The influence of passing comment on children  comes into play at this juncture. When I was very young, and like a dry sponge for the moisture of all things living and wild in the world, my father, The Old Duffer, was more than sceptical about my claim of a green-veined white in our terraced house garden. From that specific moment, the subject having departed for habitats more floral than our yard, I dismissed the idea from my thoughts but later in life realised it probably was correctly identified and with that comes the associated truth that there are occasions when children are right and their sceptical, perhaps cynical, elders are not. The open-mindedness of youth is not always to be ridiculed.

A similar thing happened with my first Goldcrest. A bird too tinily glorious to be common, one might have thought, but there was one near home and I got a perfect view of it, but, no, "It couldn't have been!"

It was.

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The air has carried a frission; an electric charge; an inate excitement not experienced since the days of McGuigan and Herol 'Bomber' Graham when every punch and each evasive movement were shared with nervously twitching legs. Bodily perspiration pervading.

England were to face Sweden...and then Croatia...in latter stages of The World Cup.

The exceptional competition. The ultimate entertainment.

Davies, Motson, Coleman.

At 50+ I recall feeling the heat and sunshine of distant lands, through radio and television.

That hazy cacophony of commentary and crowd.

The blurred sun-baked images of the long-haired and the short-shorted.

Pele, Moore, Beckenbauer.

I hope today's people find the same indelible memories when they get older.

Mbappe, De Bruyne, Trippier perhaps.

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The small blue is a particularly rare butterfly in these parts. Restricted to a few calcareous sites around the Southam area and often, if not always, present due to reintroduction. The problem being it has but one food plant (a bad evolutionary choice) being kidney vetch, a plant appearing like some kind of futuristic yellow clover tending towards red at times.

Friday or Saturday there were three butterflies trapped in the greenhouse (the record is seven). A small tortoiseshell and uninspected white and a tiny blue individual who answered to the name of Tim. Well, of course he did.

A holly blue I thought, briefly viewing the underside of his wings.

I gathered him in my hand with a view to getting closer to a camera but in walking toward the house he crept through a gap and appeared on the back of my hand, instantly to flee the scene.

Another, or the same, individual leap-frogged across the lawn but was too sensitive and elusive to accept a close-up.

On reflection later that day it became likely, in my head at least, that this creature was just too small to be holly blue and so I contacted the County Recorder who quickly confirmed that 2nd broods of butterflies in this draining summer were smaller than the norm reverting me back to the rather more common holly blue.


An out of place full-size Holly Blue on dragged waterweed

This theory came home to me yesterday when I found a group of five tiny freshly emerged gatekeepers close to a tatty previous emerger that was at least twice their size.

I shall keep searching for blues though and be rather more careful with i.d. in future.

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And so to the most incredible insects of summer, large dragonflies.

For a few years now we've been lucky enough to have a Southern hawker clearing our garden of bugs late into the evening. Just last night I found, this time, we had two, albeit their territorial tete-a-tete ended in a crashing of crisp wings and the loss of the loser sharpish to the surroundings.

I've been trying to I.d. them for 3 or 4 years now seriously but find it so difficult. My eyes and brain not being as sharply connected as they were. Slowly though it's started coming together and thanks to a few know diagnostic features of certain key species less are getting away unlabelled. Yes, the Dymo machine is in overdrive!

It's been pleasing to realise that the UK's biggest, the monstrous emperor, is actually quite common...and seriously aggressive...catching, killing and eating bugs on the wing with remarkably loud cracking sounds, and chasing off intruders.

These have been seen over more than one local stillwater lately, dominating the odonata.

The most common dragon though has been the middle-sized black-tailed skimmer and, through its habit of perching close to the water, it has proven easy to capture in digital form too.

 

Summer visiting hobbies, our most glamourous bird of prey with its orange plus-fours, gorge on these insects in late season when they are at their most numerous and can be seen over prime foraging territory sometimes in small groups at this time of year taking their share in their feet, ripping-off the wings and eating the body while in flight.

A sight definitely worth seeking-out.

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As I look out into thickest Warwickshire this morning the sun concentrates to build the heat of the day again and the "driest summer for a century" (it's July, anything could happen yet) extends to at least another day.


With apologies/thanks to:

• Sex Pistols 
• The Sun, yes, The Sun
• Holland, Dozier, Holland/Martha Reeves & The Vandellas