Tower and Town, August 2024 (view the full edition)Nature Notes: Nature's ConsolationNature's consolation: The natural world seems more important to me than ever during these troubled times in our world. I rely on it to reassure, to offer hope and a sense of continuity when life seems so full of uncertainties. It has not been a good year for the birds, butterflies and wild flowers: too often rain, steely-grey skies, intermittent sunshine and unwelcome winds have got in the way. So whenever the weather has been clement and kind, time in the countryside has been precious and time now presses on towards autumn. After the Avebury solstice I felt the need for some peace and quiet and took the local walk up Windmill Hill on a glorious warm summer evening. A Whitethroat was delivering his scratchy song, a Skylark got up from the track and mounted the sky, and a Hare stood motionless at the edge of a field of barley wavering and glistening in the fading sunlight to my left. I smiled and gave my dog a friendly pat; it seemed as if the natural world was welcoming me and telling me that all was just as it always had been. All isn't as it used to be sadly, but what it still offers is precious and I store up the special moments in my memory like picture postcards, to see me through the dark hours and boring spells. If the weather has been unreliable it hasn't inhibited the wild flowers, even if they have often been obscured by the tall grasses this year. It's been possible to see up to six species of orchids at Morgan's Hill Nature Reserve where I recently encountered two that were new to me: the Frog Orchid (flowers like a frog's head) and the "mixtum" hybrid Common Spotted crossed with Frog. Add to this a few clusters of Marsh Helleborine nestling along a sloping bank. I returned refreshed and elated. Good butterfly days have been few and far between so the afternoon I recorded Marsh Fritillary, Duke of Burgundy, Dingy and Grizzled Skipper and three other species on a short visit to a sun-drenched sloping meadow in June was a special one. Memorable sounds include the intermittent "bleating" of a quail in a field of barley, a Grasshopper Warbler "reeling" from a patch of brambles and a female cuckoo uttering her hysterical bubbling call. A strawberry moon coincided with Solstice night this year, and what a magical sight it was. We should never underestimate nature's power to amaze us and lift our spirits!  Wilton Windmill, credit David White Robin Nelson |