Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (24 page)

Beautiful as these insects are, we haven’t come to look at wildlife above the surface, but below. The water itself is crystal clear, though the prevalence of blanket weed, jammed up against the dam of the concrete bridge, suggests that too much chemical fertiliser has been used on the adjacent fields. But the presence of pond snails on
the
weed’s surface, each grazing its own little patch like slow-motion cattle out to grass, gives some cause for hope.

The surface of the water is alive with activity, another good sign. Mayflies are here, as are dozens of whirligig beetles, whizzing insanely around like dodgem cars, but never actually crashing into one another. Peter nets some, and we take a closer look: the black shell appearing almost silver, as if a small drop of mercury has been applied to its surface. The next pass of the net produces more treasures, which are swiftly transferred to a white metal dish, of the type we used to see in doctors’ surgeries.

A leech swims around, alternately extending its front end and bunching up its rear, thus passing from a long, slender creature into a stout, round one, and back again, in a second or two. This effective means of locomotion continues when Peter picks it up, and we watch as it slides along his finger. The children are suitably entranced.

Water-boatmen are backstroke swimmers with three pairs of legs. They use the middle pair to propel them efficiently along (the rear legs are used as rudders, while the front pair grabs any passing morsels of food). We avoid picking them up, for they can give a nasty bite; as painful, Peter tells me, as a bee sting. We have also caught an awful lot of snails: the giant pond snail, whose elongated, spire-like shape neatly reflects the distant spire of the church at East Brent; and the smaller ramshorn snail, whose shell does indeed curl around itself like a sheep’s horn. There is also a much smaller, reddish-black creature, which might
pass
for a tiny pebble: the cherrystone beetle, named for its obvious resemblance to the seeds of that summer fruit.

Meanwhile, Daisy and Charlie are catching fish by the netful: tiny silvery creatures rather like miniature whitebait. A closer look reveals three small spines – stickle backs, of course. We explain the stickleback’s extraordinary lifecycle to the children – how the males make a nest and look after the young – but they are more interested in catching even more fish. These include a few browner individuals without the spines: minnows.

George nets a great prize, a pale yellowish-brown creature about the length of my thumb joint, with formidable-looking jaws. To me it looks like a dragonfly nymph, but Peter identifies it as the larva of the great diving beetle, which ranks with the largest British aquatic invertebrates. Deposited in the tray, it makes short work of grabbing and devouring a tiny stickleback.

A smaller rhyne, just across the road, is covered with lime-green: the run-of-the-mill common duckweed, and the larger giant duckweed, a deep auburn-red in colour. Duckweed’s ability to completely cover the surface of the water, creating the illusion of solidity, has given rise to a chilling folk tale: the story of Jenny Greenteeth. Jenny is supposed to lure little children into her watery lair by tempting them to walk on the solid-looking duckweed, causing them to fall through and drown. My own children watch agog as I relate this story, presumably designed to
warn
earlier generations of the perils of venturing too near the water.

After a pint and a ploughman’s at the White Horse Inn, we head across to Tealham Moor, where a herd of curious cattle wanders over to watch our equally curious antics. Here we find no fewer than four out of five species of native duckweed: the pale green ivy-leaved, and the bladder-like gibbous, making up the quartet. It is the fifth, more elusive duckweed species we are really searching for: the tiny
Wolffia arrhiza
, the smallest flowering plant in Britain, and one of the smallest in the world. As its scientific name suggests, this plant has no roots, and being so tiny, is not an easy plant to find. But Peter has a cunning plan. Turning his net around, he dips the rosewood handle into the water and sweeps it from side to side. Duckweed sticks to wood, so hopefully his trawl will include our tiny target.

Unfortunately, despite persistent sweeping, it does not. As we walk back along the banks of the rhyne we do come across the open shell of a huge duck mussel; at almost 5 inches across, a giant compared with most British invertebrates. The outside of the shell is greenish-yellow, marked with narrow black lines, while the inside has the smooth, polished appearance of mother-of-pearl. Our fascination with the mussel shell means we fail to notice the cattle approaching; and a brief moment of panic ensues as the children look up to see a wall of black and white towering over them. A swift clamber over the farm gate, and our outing reaches a satisfactory conclusion.

Very satisfactory, indeed. The children’s verdict – ‘the best day ever!’ – suggests that the rival attractions of TV and computer games may not be quite as compelling as we sometimes suppose. Given the simple pleasures of a fishing net, clear water and some of the most fascinating creatures on the planet, children actually find nature quite interesting, after all.

R
IVALLING THE FOX
as the least popular animal around these parts is the badger. This is not the place to go into the debate about badgers and bovine TB, but of one thing there can be no doubt: the badger is never going to come top of the animal hit parade, at least among the local farming community here in Somerset. But among many other people, in the country and the city, badgers are very popular indeed. Thanks to television programmes such as
Springwatch
, and the genial old character in
The Wind in the Willows
, badgers are often regarded as rather amiable creatures, to be encouraged rather than condemned or culled.

So which of these two images – the ‘good badger’ and the ‘bad badger’ – is the right one? Of course the truth lies somewhere in between: the badger is simply a wild animal getting on with its life as best it can, given that human beings have invaded its world. For badgers are, above all, creatures of habit. They live in the same setts as
their
ancestors, follow the same nocturnal trails in search of food, and remain faithful to the same place, even if people have changed it beyond recognition; for example, by building a housing estate over it.

My in-laws, living in a bungalow on the outskirts of Wedmore, are currently fighting a running battle to stop the badgers digging up their small, neat lawn. It’s a battle that, despite yards of chicken wire being mobilised as a defence, they may well lose: it takes a lot to stop a determined badger. But others welcome the presence of badgers in their back garden, and even seek to attract them there.

Susie and Kev live just outside the village of East Brent, a quarter-hour’s walk to the north-west of the parish, and at the foot of our well-known local landmark, Brent Knoll. This volcano-shaped hill rises almost 500 feet above the surrounding landscape, and over the centuries has played host to an Iron Age hill fort, a Roman camp, and a pitched battle between the men of Somerset and the invading Danes, a battle the local army won. It is also home to an extensive clan of badgers, which have become regular visitors to Susie and Kev’s back garden.

Until I moved down to Somerset, I had only ever seen two badgers in my whole life: both at night, both while I was driving, and both very brief views, as they scuttled across the road in front of me, a frustrating flash of black, white and grey. For despite their size – about the same as a fox terrier – badgers are just as elusive as any other wild mammal. Since living here I have enjoyed a
few
more encounters with them, such as one lumbering across a frosty field early one winter’s morning, or a rear end disappearing down the lane as we returned home from a late night out. But these have always been rather brief and unsatisfactory, so I am looking forward to a more rewarding experience tonight.

And a more rewarding experience, with badgers at least, would be hard to find. As I approach the front door it opens, and Susie quickly beckons me in. It’s not yet ten o’clock, and still fairly light, but the animals are, apparently, already here. She ushers me into the sitting room, and through the French windows I can see a bulky male badger shambling across the lawn, vacuuming up peanuts at an impressive rate.

Within a few minutes, as it gets dark, he is joined by the whole clan: four cubs and three females, eight badgers in all. Susie tells me they first arrived during the winter snows, taking advantage of the food she was putting out for the birds. Since then they’ve become regular visitors, and now that the summer drought has turned the ground rock-hard, and worms and slugs are hard to find, they appear grateful for her ready supply of nuts and jam-and-peanut-butter sandwiches. As I watch, they move steadily across the lawn, grazing intently like a herd of cattle.

The more I look at badgers, the more they strike me as odd. They are mustelids – the same family as otters, weasels and stoats – but all these animals have a
recognisable
kinship with one another, reflected in their long, slender shape and sleek appearance. In contrast, badgers are stout, short-tailed, with that huge head and unmistakable black-and-white pattern. Looked at more closely, they strike me as having more in common with anteaters or armadillos than any native British mammal.

They range slowly and deliberately back and forth across the clover-covered lawn; one, bolder animal venturing onto the patio, so close I can no longer focus my binoculars. The cubs are almost the size of their parents now, but still retain their playful manner.

An hour or so after they first appeared, the badgers trail off, one by one, into the nearby woods. For the rest of the night they will forage for whatever they can find. But whatever they discover, it is unlikely to be as convenient as what’s on offer on Susie and Kev’s back lawn.

B
Y THE MIDDLE
of July, the world is rapidly turning purple. Along the parish verges, the yellows, creams and whites of spring have given way to the mauves, lilacs and violets of summer. These richer, fuller, deeper shades suit this time of plenty, at the very moment in the calendar when every plant and animal is busy fulfilling its biological destiny.

They look pretty too, these varied visions of floral excess. Purple loosestrife, the undisputed queen of that
shade
, is in full bloom along the edges of the rhynes and ditches, heavy with colour. It is known locally as ‘water vinny’; another folk name is ‘long purples’, which could hardly be bettered for this statuesque wild flower, standing tall and proud in the damper areas of the parish throughout July.

On the drier ground between, there are tight clumps of creeping thistle: tall, slender, with a tuft of white hairs perched on top of the dull purple head; and a larger but equally spiky plant, the teasel. Unlike the familiar deep brown objects my grandmother kept in her favourite vase, these are in flower, not seed; and pale green, with a light dusting of purple across their spines. Teasels were once grown commercially, being used to clean and comb cloth, as their fine, sharp spines were far more effective than anything we could artificially manufacture.

But the most common floral purple, found along almost every lane and drove, is the great willowherb. Its delicate pinkish-purple flowers, clustered atop tall, green, hairy stalks, provide a new layer of colour between road and hedgerow. Like so many familiar summer flowers, it has many country names, in this case sharing a theme. ‘Apple-pie’, ‘coddled apples’, ‘custard-cups’, ‘currant-dumpling’ and ‘codlins-and-cream’, all refer to a link with fruit-based puddings – ‘codlins’ being sour apples that were boiled in milk.

For more than three hundred years, since the seventeenth-century botanist John Ray claimed to have
crushed
the leaves and smelt apples, books repeated this anecdote as an explanation of these fruity folk names. But Geoffrey Grigson pointed out that the leaves and flowers of the great willow-herb ‘have no characteristic smell’. I rub them between my fingers, and discover that he is quite correct; they are virtually scentless. Still, it is a pretty flower, adding a welcome splash of colour to the increasingly brown-and-yellow scene.