Remember the days when moths joined you in your bedroom the moment you put the light on?
And did you find this year that only a few arrived?
Warm summer nights and moths seem to go together like fish and chips (well, sort of), so I suppose that we can only deduce that they have joined the sad ranks of declining species.
Although that sudden flutter and flapping and zooming can be a nuisance if you’re trying to read before you drop off to sleep, it has always fascinated me the way they suddenly disappear when you plunge the room into darkness.
They obviously find their way in through the merest chink, and they seem to find their way out just as quickly but as our village has no street lights to
head for, what lights can they see?
As I have said many a time before, I am no professional in these matters, I just look things up when curiosity gets the better of me, and here, with a bit of imagination from me, is what I found.
As it is primarily nocturnal, a moth evolved to travel by the glimmer of the moon, and the bright, garish lights of today have thoroughly confused it.
It was probably still trying to adapt to other forms of lighting that man had invented over the years, when along comes Thomas Eddison with his dazzling electric light bulb.
Maybe that was one step too far for the poor little thing.
It thinks that our lights are lots of artificial moons and finds them irresistible, but isn’t it remarkable that it manages to exit as quickly as it entered once the room is plunged into darkness?
Presumably it has seen the faintest glimmer somewhere outside that is far too faint for human eyes. Heaven help it if it is anywhere near a brightly lit town.
Swallows and house martins
In the last week of August, I watched swallows and house martins gathering on the power lines opposite me. At least, I assume there were swallows amongst them
but there haven’t been so many of them around this summer. More and more gathered, sat quite still for a good a quarter of an hour, then suddenly took off as
one, swirled around in a practice flight, then, a few minutes later, returned, a few at a time, to the same power line. T
o begin with, there weren’t so many, but there was one anxiously going up and down the line, looking as though it were checking to see who was missing.
Gradually, the line filled up, and I looked away for a few minutes.
When I looked back they had all gone, and this time they didn’t come back. They don’t usually leave our shores until the middle of September, so perhaps they are
preparing to meet up with other colonies before they all take off in one huge flock to warmer homes.
There was a thatched cottage opposite us when we lived in Devon and it was on this roof that I saw one of the most amazing sights. The roof gradually became
completely covered with house martins and swallows so that eventually hardly a straw of thatch was visible. However, as you might guess, I went away to do
something else for about 10 minutes, and when I came back, every bird had vanished.
It was as though I had dreamed the whole thing.
By the way, did you know that the collective nouns for house martins is ‘a richness’ and that for swallows it is ‘a flight or gulp‘? Nice – I like those.
Wasps – did they invent paper?
My daughter, like many others, loathes wasps.
Many don’t like them with good reason because they are allergic to their sting, but most of us are just very wary of things that are likely to cause pain.
Righteously, I try to point out all that is good about them but my daughter is very sceptical.
There is a lot going for them though.
They help to keep down spiders, woodlice and aphids and other pests and they are great pollinators. And for those who are still not convinced, wasps could also be
credited indirectly with the invention of paper.
Whilst watching wasps build a nest one day about 2,000 years ago, a Chinese eunuch was so fascinated by what he saw that he began to mulch wood.
Result? The first rudimentary piece of paper.
A small army of Frogs
The nicest thing I saw in the last week in August – six tiny frogs, the size of my thumb nail, sitting on lily leaves in my pond. And the collective noun for a group of frogs is called ‘an army’.
This was a very, very small army.