Hot Stuff

It has been a hot and sunny week and on a couple of days, very hot, and how enjoyable it has been after such a miserable summer so far. How wonderful it has been to be out on the marsh early in the morning while the dew is still on the grass and the sun is only just starting to warm the air. Birds are busy scurrying about, doing what they need to do before the heat of the day sets in and they then disappear to the depths and cool of the undergrowth. Yesterday a lone Cuckoo flew by, no longer issuing it's haunting call notes and no doubt already on it's way back south to Africa for the rest of the year. Some of the grazing meadows, that have not yet received attention from the cattle, are looking as good as I've ever seen them, long lush grass thickened by great carpets of red and white clover in flower and Birds-foot Trefoil. The heat and sunshine has also brought out larger numbers of various butterflies to skip through the grass, while bumblebees feed on the clover flowers, high summer is at last with us.
The hay has all been cut, baled and stacked and the rape crop harvested to leave great, dry fields of bare stalks. Very soon now the wheat and spring barley will also be harvested and it is looking very golden in the early morning light.

One of our two neighbouring farmers in recent years has taken to sowing wide strips of wildlife friendly flowers alongside some of his crops. Last year it was the tall and strikingly blue chicory flowers that attracted bees and butterflies from far and wide and whose fallen seeds fed a large flock of Linnets all winter. This summer it is a purple flower that I cannot identify but which is proving just as irresistible to bees. The flowers have a scabious look about them but rather than the pop-pom effect of scabious flowers, these have a curved effect to the segments.