Nature Notes

Despite – because of? – several heat waves and unprecedented drought conditions over the summer, it has clearly been a bumper year for our local wildlife. Very local: I mean the critters that turn up in or near our tiny back garden in suburban Southampton, from the Roe Deer that peer over the wall that divides us from an adjacent cemetery as they munch on the rampant brambles to the many species of insect that buzz about and lurk among the shrubs on our steeply-sloping back bank.

Recently we have hosted raids from large rival gangs of tiny birds: young Willow Warblers and a mixed flock of Long-Tailed, Blue, and Great Tits. It can seem like there are dozens of them out there, as they flicker and  twitch frantically around the garden looking for snacks to fuel their absurdly overdriven metabolisms. Calm down, guys! Then there is the fox that regularly pads along the wall in broad daylight, and our most regular visitor of all, next door's cat, who seems to prefer our unruly wilderness as a contemplative space to their neatly-trimmed garden.

Some of our most welcome annual visitors are the day-flying Hummingbird Hawk-Moths, which – incredibly – will have migrated all the way from southern Europe. I always look forward to their arrival in our garden some time around mid-to-late August, and enjoy watching them as they hover and dart about the flowering shrubs looking just like little hummingbirds, their wings a blur of orange and brown. The ability of such frail creatures to make such dangerous voyages, including a Channel crossing, is astonishing, isn't it? I remember sitting in the university Staff Club one lunchtime, and watching a succession of Painted Lady butterflies fly past the window, each spaced out by twenty yards or so as if attached to some invisible cable, having completed a similar odyssey from deepest Europe. What on earth is the attraction? What ill-judged compulsion is buried deep in their genetic makeup? Like those poor devils making daily hazardous Channel crossings in inflatable rafts, what false promises have they been told about what lies in store for them here? Dammit, people, you were already in France. France! Yes, they're surly bastards, but the weather, the food... Why come here?

A few days ago I was amused to watch one of the young warblers attempting to take down a hawk moth. Both bird and moth are hyper-zippy, but speed is not everything and the moth has more tricks up its lepidopterous sleeve than the inexperienced bird. It was able to evade the warbler's rushes and lunges with its stabbing beak like Ip Man swerving the knife slashes of some triad thug. Eventually, however, the hassle was too much, the moth lost patience, and ejected from its rudely interrupted feeding session, zooming away up into the tree tops at warp speed, like a UFO disappearing off the radar screen. Gone!