30 Days Wild - Week 3

David Phillips

This second half of my 30 Days Wild challenge will have a distinctly continental feel having been fortunate enough to spend the latter part of June deep in rural France.

Immediately apparent in comparison with much of the UK is the abundance of insect life here. Butterflies were in abundance everywhere including varieties such as Cleopatra, Black-veined White, Swallowtail and Long-tailed Blue alongside our own Marbled Whites and Meadow Browns. With many fields a profusion of wild flowers any walk here is accompanied by the incessant chirping of crickets and the rasping stridulations of grasshoppers. Hedgerows and roadside banks were generously dotted with spectacular Lizard Orchids whilst in the smaller meadows Stately Bee and Burnished-tongue Orchids were abundant.

With such largesse of insects to choose from birds were everywhere taking advantage of this glut of prey. Hoopoes, those superbly showy ambassadors of the south, and Red-backed Shrikes, adorned scrub and roadside bushes whilst squadrons of screaming Swifts frequented the square of the local town.

Hopefully the various pledges that at last are now being made by those holding the strings of our UK land management policies will come to fruition before too long and we can once again look forward to a recovery in our own biodiversity levels to those such as we once enjoyed.