The Calm after the Storm

The smell of damp earth that lingers after a storm is hauntingly nostalgic. Whatever else may change in life, the heady aroma of petrichor remains much the same. It ties together different times, different locations.

Sunday began with the same humid, clammy feeling hanging in the air which had greeted us for the previous few days. By British standards the air felt close, so full of heat and moisture that it was clear that something was going to give.

Just after midday the first drop fell. Followed by another. And another. Soon the rain was coming thick and fast. What had started as a light shower was now beating down on the conservatory roof with such force that I started to wonder just how much pelting the glass could take.

I would always rather be outside if given the choice, but there is something beautiful and comforting about listening to the hammering of tens of thousands of raindrops clinking against panes of glass all around.

As soon as the rain drew the curtain on its spectacle we ventured outside into our local woods. Remnants of water dripped off the slippery waxy surfaces of the leaves and splashed into the brook below, causing gradually increasing ripples in its now much fuller basin. Fragrant saturated earth squelched underneath our weathered walking boots. Dewy blades of grass shimmered and sprung up as they recovered from the aqueous assault.

We weren’t the only ones emerging after the deluge. The verdant paths ahead of us glistened with the slithering bodies of hundreds of muculent slugs. As a keen vegetable grower I have experienced my fair share of frustration at these slippery characters, but my overwhelming feeling towards them is amazement. There are around 30 species of slugs in the UK and they come in all manner of beautiful and bizarre forms, from the Large Black Slug that many of us are used to seeing in our gardens, to the more rare yellowish Shelled Slug.

It won’t have just been me who was excited to see the vast array of gleaming molluscs lying on and lining the paths. To the blackbirds who were also appearing after the rain this would have looked like a sumptuous banquet. While it may not sound appetising to us, a number of birds relish the chance to get their beaks around some slippery slugs.

Just as we were heading back something caught my eye. Something smooth, shiny and very small. As we peered closer we realised that a tiny froglet was hiding amongst the damp grass, making a brave hop from time to time towards the safe thickets at the edge of the path. The glossy moss-green skin on his chest gently rose and fell with the rhythm of his measured breathing. Not long before we had seen tens of minute tadpoles swimming serenely in the brook nearby and now those same tadpoles, just like this little frog, will have grown their legs and embarked on a great adventure into the real world. When you consider that frogs receive no parental care, their first few months on dry land seem all the more intimidating. We left this diminutive frog to his own devices but, although it is just nature, as we walked away I couldn’t help but hope that one of the hungry denizens of the woods wouldn’t find him so that he could stay out of danger for another day.

We can certainly not be called fair-weather nature enthusiasts. We will happily don raincoats, walking boots and waterproof trousers and immerse ourselves in whatever weather this beautiful country has to offer. After all, if you live in Britain and enjoy being outdoors, you really can’t turn your nose up at a little precipitation. However, I understand that many people aren’t quite so keen to get acquainted with forceful winds and a torrent of rain, and for those people in particular I would really recommend the joys of venturing into the great outdoors after a storm. Once the extreme weather has settled, the world appears anew, the verdure twinkles and the air takes on an exhilarating scent of freshness. Just go outside and breath it in.

Coming Home to Wildness

There is something awakening, bracing, enlivening about an encounter with true untamed wildness. It is a feeling that we can rarely experience in this country, deprived as it is of large expanses of completely untouched countryside by continual residential or industrial developments. But when you do feel it, it is like coming home. It is as if our bodies and minds are greeting an old friend which they have lost contact with. As the warmth of the sun kisses our skin, the wind’s breath caresses our limbs and our eyes feast on nature’s feral beauty, we realise on an elemental level just what we have been missing.

While this sense of wildness is scarce in our cultivated land, there are places within reach which give us a taste of the natural world’s breathtaking, awe-inspiring, spine-tingling undomesticated form.

One such place in our patch is Wicken Fen. This magnificent, wind-beaten, wildlife abounding area of wetland provides a window into an all but lost landscape. Wicken Fen is one of the last remnants of undrained fenland. The vast majority of the low-lying marshy fens were drained several hundred years ago but the National Trust has committed to maintaining areas of currently undrained fen and rewetting other areas to create a rich network of wetland habitats.

The success of Wicken’s naturally managed landscape is proven in its impressive evidence of 9,175 recorded species. It is home to species ranging from wetland-loving plants such as Fen Bedstraw (Galium uliginosum) and Hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum), to birds of prey such as Hobbies and Hen Harriers, and from reptiles such as Common Lizards to a vast variety of insects including a huge range of butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies and beetles. It is impossible to do justice to the wealth of wildlife at Wicken with just a short summary, I would really recommend visiting the reserve to appreciate its diversity.

We humans may use energizing experiences of the elements as a way of bringing ourselves back in touch with nature and escaping the rat-race, but these species have never had the chance to lose contact with their natural state of being. For us, encounters with true wildness are awakening, but we can learn a lot about how to live from creatures for whom wildness is just a way of life.

A View from the Bridge

Just days after I posted last about the wonders of Odonata, we were given another glimpse into their incredible lives.

After a week of inclement weather which probably made the local wildlife wonder whether it really was summer after all, we set out for a stroll at Milton Country Park on a seasonably warm afternoon under a sky which was draped with only a few benign wisps of cloud. We hoped that this sudden change in weather would encourage the park’s animals out of their hiding places.

Thousands of people drive past Milton Country Park every day while commuting on the infamous A14, but many don’t know it is there. Set back from the road and hidden by thick rows of trees, the park is a verdant oasis amidst some of the busiest roads and one of the most bustling industrial areas of Cambridge. The area was formerly filled with gravel pits but has been transformed into an expanse of wetland in which a multitude of wildlife thrives.

As always, we were treated to a myriad of sightings of water birds such as moorhens, swans and great-crested grebes, all of which were with young – somewhat older and less awkward than a couple of months ago but no less adorable. But as we passed over one of the park’s many quaint bridges overlooking the edge of a lake we saw something different, something we hadn’t seen there before.

A female Brown Hawker dragonfly was hovering close to the water, carefully surveying the area. At first it appeared that maybe she was hunting, but what happened next felt really special. She wavered nearer to the water, until she was just a couple of centimetres above it, and then gently dipped her tail under the surface. It was then that we realised that she was ovipositing!

She stayed in the same spot for a few minutes, laying her eggs in the water, before moving slightly to a position just above the water’s edge. Here she deposited more eggs, but this time into the mud on the bank, rather than directly into the water itself.

This is just the start of a fascinating process. Once her eggs hatch, they will remain underwater in their larval stage for a number of years before emerging from their aquatic world and undergoing a final moult to become adult dragonflies. Their adult stage in comparison is only a brief chapter in their lives, lasting just a few weeks.

So next time you’re near a calm body of freshwater, just stop for a moment and take a closer look, and you too may catch sight of a female dragonfly laying her precious eggs. It really is a sight to behold.

An Ode to Odonata

A deadly voracious predator with the ability to reach speeds of 30 miles an hour, move their wings independently and catch insects in flight. A graceful enchanting flyer decorated with a range of iridescent rainbow hues. It may not sound as though I am talking about the same creature in these two sentences but that is part of the beauty of dragonflies and damselflies, they are intimidatingly impressive yet exquisitely elegant.

Blue-tailed damselfly

Since the beginnings of their ancestors in the Late Carboniferous period, the Odonata (the taxonomic order which consists of dragonflies and damselflies) have been a strong presence in marshes and wetlands. They are incredibly widespread and have colonised every continent with the exception of Antarctica.

Mating Common Blue damselflies

Their dazzling adult form is tragically transient and lasts merely days or weeks. Most of their lifecycle is spent underwater in their nymph form. Although immature, the nymphs are none-the-less impressive hunters and can dominate a freshwater ecosystem with their aggressive predation skills.

Common Blue damselfly

Living near fenland, we are lucky enough to have a number sites in close proximity that are teaming with dragonflies and damselflies. Two of the best are Wicken Fen and Paxton Pits. With abundant areas of clean freshwater, rich with vegetation, they both provide the perfect conditions for these incredible insects to lay their eggs and for their nymphs to live until they are ready to emerge as adults.

Female Banded Demoiselle

Many Odonata are sexually dimorphic which can make identifying them trickier but, then again, doesn’t that just add to the fun? One of the damselflies that we see most often, the Banded Demoiselle, is a perfect example of this. The name is apt for the male who has distinctive dark patches on his wings which shimmer like black velvet alongside his azure body. However, the female does not display any of the bands which provide her name. She has clear wings and a striking emerald body.

Male Banded Demoiselle

The male Banded Demoiselle is one of the easiest damselflies to identify seeing as there are only two British species that appear to have coloured wings and the other, the Beautiful Demoiselle, has fully tinted wings, without any bands.

Female Banded Demoiselle

Another species of damselfly which regularly makes an appearance on our walks is the Common Blue. This dainty electric blue hued beauty is easily confused with the Azure damselfly. If you look with binoculars or manage to get a good photo the identification becomes easier as there are differences in the pattern of the antehumeral stripes on their thoraxes.

Common Blue damselfly

But enough of these diaphanous damselflies and on to the beasts of the Odonata world – the dragonflies. Without much knowledge of different species, by sight they can generally be distinguished from damselflies by their larger, sturdier form. While they are at rest another hint which will help you distinguish them is to look at the position of their wings. Damselflies hold their wings alongside their body while resting, while dragonflies position their wings out from their body. Perhaps a more subtle difference to the naked eye is the relative size of their wings to each other. While damselflies’ front and rear wings are similar in size, dragonflies rear wings are wider than their front wings.

Damselflies may look deceptively placid but, with their imposing size and strong flying skills, dragonflies are unmistakably dynamic and charismatic. The Ruddy Darter cuts a particularly striking figure alongside the undrained fenland on Wicken’s Sedge Fen trail. This species’ searing scarlet body flashes brightly against the sepia toned fenland vegetation, arousing images of the bleakly beautiful wildness of the place.

Ruddy Darter

The Four-spotted Chaser is another striking, glitzy dragonfly which resides at Wicken Fen and in much of the UK. As it hums past in a bronze blur you may not notice its most dazzling feature, but as it gently rests upon the wetland flora you will easily see how it procured its name. About halfway along and near to the tip of the leading edge of each otherwise clear wing it has eye-catching ebony patches.

Four-spotted Chaser

Subtler, yet no less extraordinary, is the Black-tailed Skimmer. We spent an hour or so basking beside one of the picturesque lakes at Paxton entranced by the aerial acrobatics of this dragonfly and its gorgeous colourings which intensify down its body in an ombré fashion from light blue to black.

Black-tailed Skimmer

In the past I generally admired dragonflies and damselflies for their ephemeral beauty and impressive forms without paying too much attention to species, but as I have dipped my toe into actively identifying them over the past few months I have developed an even greater appreciation of these fascinating creatures. Whether you are bewitched by their stunning patterns, their intriguing behaviour or their stimulating ecology, it is impossible not to adore these luminaries of the insect world.

Black-tailed Skimmer