A Buzz in the Meadow (3 page)

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.
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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.
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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 blackthorn 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.

We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.

Bill Vaughan

 

Insects are creatures with three pairs of legs,

Some swim, some fly; they lay millions of eggs.

They don't wear their skeletons in, but out.

Their blood just goes sloshing loosely about;

They come in three parts. Some are bare; some have hair.

Their hearts are in back; they circulate air.

They smell with their feelers and taste with their feet,

And there's scarcely a thing that some insects won't eat:

Flowers and woodwork and books and rugs,

Overcoats, people, and other bugs.

When five billion trillion keep munching each day,

It's a wonder the world isn't nibbled away!

Ethel Jacobson, ‘The Insects' World'

Half a billion years ago, give or take, a slow revolution began. On the muddy floor of an ancient ocean, a selection of weird and wonderful creatures began their bid to take over the world. Most of them looked little like any of today's living creatures. They had segmented bodies equipped with a varying array of tentacles, claws, spines, eyes and numerous other odd appendages, the purpose of which we will almost certainly never understand. We would not know about these wonderful, long-dead creatures were it not for the diligence of one Charles Walcott, a fossil-hunter and geologist who, late in his life in 1909, stumbled upon a huge selection of beautifully preserved fossils from this era high in the Canadian Rockies. The rock formation, now known as the Burgess Shale, was formed from layers of soft silt that had settled on the ocean floor, trapping and preserving in extraordinary detail the bodies of the creatures that lived there. We still don't know why the fossils here were preserved so well; it may have been that an area of the ocean floor was anoxic, so that creatures entering it suffocated and were preserved by the lack of oxygen, or it may have been that a series of sudden mud-slides trapped and preserved these hapless creatures. Whatever the reason, the Burgess Shale provides a remarkable picture of a primordial world.

Walcott spent the last years of his life in repeated trips to the Burgess Shale, and in attempting to identify and classify the fossils he collected. Most of the primitive animals that he described he assigned to one group, the arthropods (meaning ‘jointed feet'). This is the group that today comprises crustaceans, arachnids and the insects. All arthropods have a segmented exoskeleton, a rigid, articulated suit of armour, usually equipped with an array of jointed limbs. They have been compared to Swiss-army knives; their limbs can each be specialised for different functions: walking, swimming, grabbing, stabbing, mating, breathing, flying, weaving and so on. Just like the army knife, these limbs often fold neatly away when not in use.

Among the arthropods in the Burgess Shale were crustacean-like creatures, relatives of the crabs, lobsters, krill, shrimps, barnacles and copepods that abound in the seas to this day. There were many other creatures too, ones that were hard to classify into familiar arthropod groups and presumably belonged to lineages that did not survive the intervening eons to the present day. There was
Opabinia
, which appeared to have five eyes and a downcurved trunk like that of a minature elephant; and
Hallucigenia
, a surpassingly strange creature a little reminiscent of a cross between a worm and a hedgehog, with numerous legs and paired sharp spines. When this was first described, it was thought to walk on its spines, with its tentacle-like legs waving above it. It has now been flipped over and is portrayed with its spines on top, presumably as a form of defence, although we will never know for sure. One of the larger genera, named
Animalocaris
, was frequently preserved in fragments, perhaps because its body easily broke apart after death, and its different body parts were originally classified as three different animals, until a whole specimen was eventually discovered.
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