Daniel Defoe is best known nowadays for his desert island novel Robinson Crusoe, but he also wrote an important work on social history, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724). On his travels through Suffolk he records that he witnessed ‘infinite numbers’ of swallows gathering for autumn migration on the coast. We still see swallows and house martins (did Defoe know the difference?) gathering on the telephone wires here in September, often chattering communally as if to psych themselves up before take-off on their huge journeys south. It’s always a moving spectacle but it’s also an elegiac reminder that summer is drawing to a close for us too. Defoe’s birds weren’t on telephone wires back then of course, but were, appropriately, ‘congregating’ on Southwold church. They sometimes also use other buildings, as illustrated in this photo showing a host of house martins clinging to the Shingle Street Martello tower. The big difference, though, is that sadly we no longer see them in this abundance. Forget about Defoe’s ‘infinite numbers’ in 1724 – since this photo was taken in September 2004 the number of breeding house martins in Britain has declined by nearly 40%. Swallow numbers are down too, as are swifts, which have declined by a whopping 60% in the same period. Swifts are often confused with swallows but belong to a different family altogether – one called Apodes, literally ‘without feet’, because they only have stubby toes that couldn’t grasp a telephone wire anyway. All these delightful aerial acrobats are suffering from the same problem: a corresponding sharp decline in the winged insects on which they feed.
House Martins on the Shingle Street Martello Tower, photo: Jeremy Mynott.
We’ve all noticed that ourselves. Think of the ‘splatter test’ – the number of insects smeared on your windscreen and headlights today, compared to the ‘moth snowstorm’ we used to drive through at night a generation ago. And how we miss what Tennyson happily described as the ‘murmuring of innumerable bees’. But there’s also a new factor now – climate change – and that may cause other dramatic changes. As the world’s climate heats up, the swallows’ journeys back to Southern Africa over barriers like the fast-expanding Sahara Desert become ever more arduous. Suppose the costs of long-distance migration no longer prove worth the physical risks and effort they have to endure. Perhaps the swallows might never come at all one year. Or suppose they were to come and stay over, taking advantage of our milder winters now. If we had swallows at Christmas, what would that do to our emotional responses – to swallows, spring and autumn? Are we at risk of losing the seasons as well as the insects and the birds?
Jeremy Mynott 6th August 2023
Pied flycatcher
18 Aug 2023
A pied flycatcher by the allotment patch this afternoon, feeding actively and calling repeatedly. There has been a small fall of them on the east coast in the last few days.
Jeremy
Moth morning
16 Aug 2023
Perfect night for moth-trapping – warm, still and with some cloud to occlude the moon and stars. We had a rich haul in the morning – well over 60 species, including one new to me, with the egregious name Purple-backed Cabbage-worm Moth, but very beautiful despite that.
Jeremy
Red admirals
07 Aug 2023
Huge influx of red admirals in the last two days. There were about 80 of them on one buddleia in the garden. One interesting twist to this: the week before the storms here they had all been on the purple buddleia, this new influx were all on the white one, though both are still in flower. Different tastes for the new influx?
Jeremy
Hobby
25 Jul 2023
A hobby dashed over the seawall, scattering a big flock of starlings. Such an agile raptor, able to pick off swallows and swifts in flight, but had to settle for a stray starling today.
Jeremy
Pine hawkmoth
20 Jul 2023
A lovely pine hawkmoth, posing here on the only pine tree in my garden. The wings look a little blurred because it is vibrating them rapidly preparing to fly, but I caught it just in time.
Jeremy
Graylings
17 Jul 2023
My favourite local butterfly has just emerged, right on cue in mid-July. There were at least half a dozen graylings flying round our garden in the sun this afternoon. They always rest with their wings tightly closed, so you only get to see the underside pattern on the wings but the patterning is very subtle. They also have the attractive habit of settling on garden chairs and tables, or even on your arm, so you can at least get a good look at thm.
Jeremy
Privet hawkmoth
14 Jul 2023
Monster moth in the trap last night – a privet hawkmoth. When released it settled for the day on a gatepost then at nightfall flapped away.
Jeremy
Gatekeepers
11 Jul 2023
The clouds of meadow browns on the bramble flowers have now been joined by some gatekeepers – smaller, more orange and with two eye-spots not one.
Jeremy
Village Voices Nature Note: Seismic Pleasures
The film-producer Sam Goldwyn (a Polish Jew, born Szmuel Gelbfisz) was famous for his inventive use of the English language in pronouncements like ‘a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on’ and ‘I’ll give you a definite maybe’. One quote that stuck in my mind today was Goldwyn’s formula for a good story, ‘Let’s start with an earthquake and build up to a climax’. My day did indeed start with an event high up on the Richter scale of excitement for a naturalist, a shark at Shingle St. No, not Jaws – no need to clear the beaches – but a moth of the same name, so-called from its sleek grey profile. It’s a rare species though it once gained a certain notoriety from its appearance on a pub sign in Harlow when the New Town was founded in 1948 to accommodate London overspill. The enlightened council of the time decided to name all the new pubs after moths and butterflies, so along with The Shark you got the whimsy of a Willow Beauty by the cricket ground and, for the more committed customers in town, The Drinker Moth (geddit?).
The Shark in Harlow
Oystercatchers. Photo: Cheryl Gray.
Anyway, my day ended with another thrill, involving a much commoner species of wildlife. Oystercatchers are one of the most easily recognisable wading birds on our coast, sporting that boldly pied plumage and striking orange-red bills. I’ve been tracking the progress of a pair of them who bravely attempted breeding on one of the pools just to the south of Shingle Street. They nested on an exposed little islet where they were very vulnerable to threats from dogs, foxes and predatory corvids and gulls. I often sat on the sea-wall opposite watching over them like some proxy-grandparent, admiring the tremendous vigilance and courage of the two adults who would drive off crows by flying up like fighter-jets to intercept them and see them off with piping cries as shrill as smoke alarms. After about three weeks they did to my relief eventually hatch four eggs. The young birds were immediately very mobile, but I knew it would be another thirty days before they acquired the flight feathers that would lift them to safety when necessary. The four youngsters were soon reduced to three and I feared the worst when I couldn’t see any of them today. But then I found them again – a quarter of a mile further on – and I realised they’d earned their wings and made their first solo flights. Even if the earth didn’t move for me in quite the way Goldwyn hoped, I punched the air and enjoyed a strong shot of adrenaline.
