Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (18 page)

Considering that there are around 120 million pairs, of well over 200 different species of bird, breeding in Britain, each of which needs to feed one or more broods of young, the sheer scale of this annual event is astonishing.

In this parish alone there are thousands of pairs of breeding birds, of at least fifty different species; all the more reason why each of us should safeguard our own little corner of the countryside.

A
SPELL OF
warm, sunny weather early this month means that along the lanes, every hedgerow, bush and tree looks as if it is about to burst; and as I stare intently at one hawthorn I can almost see the foliage growing outwards by the minute. Surely, if this fine weather continues, the trunks, branches and twigs will be unable to contain the green force within, and will simply explode.

On a warm, muggy evening, the volcano-like silhouette of Brent Knoll is bathed in yellow sunshine as it pokes through horizontal fingers of cloud. Opposite, towards Glastonbury Tor, a thick layer of grey fills half the sky, its folds and pleats as untidy as a teenager’s duvet. A broad, squat section of rainbow is just visible in the gap between the cloud base and the distant Mendip Hills, its layered bands of colour illuminating the sky.

All around the village, thrushes and blackbirds continue to sing their evening song. Do they never tire
of
hearing those same notes and phrases, repeated hour after hour, day after day, during the breeding season? I do another quick calculation: if a thrush sings twenty distinct phrases a minute, for six or seven hours a day (and many carry on for far longer), then during the four months of the breeding season it will have sung close to 1 million times. I do hope the females are impressed.

As I pass along Vole Road, a crescendo of sound alerts me to a newly fledged brood of reed warblers. For almost two months, their parents have skulked in the depths of the reedbeds, but now these birds show the bravado of youth, as they clamber to the tops of the hedgerows and scold me for my presence. They test out their wings, flitting clumsily from twig to twig, and showing off their neat new juvenile plumage, warm rufous above and ochre-yellow below. I can hear the adult male chuntering away, blithely ignored by his offspring.

The recent fine weather has been welcomed by the village farmers, who are working late into the evenings to gather in the grass before the rain returns. The fields have been sheared as close as the local sheep, leaving a cropped yellowish surface in place of the former lush, deep green. In the past few decades there has been a noticeable shift from growing hay – which needs days of fine weather at just the right time of year – to silage, a more dependable crop, but one that lacks the romance of the old ways of haymaking. Across most of Britain the traditional hay meadow our grandparents would have known, with its
annual
extravaganza of wild flowers, is now just a fading memory.

For some creatures, however, it doesn’t really matter which method is being used. Now that the tractor has passed, rooks and jackdaws throng the short turf, their sharp, pointed bills digging into the soil for leatherjackets to feed themselves and their youngsters, if any remain in the nest. Low across each newly cut field, swallows are vacuuming up flying insects disturbed by the mower’s blades. In between those cut for silage, the other fields alongside the road retain a luxurious growth of summer vegetation: ribwort plantain, grasses and buttercups, intermingled with spikes of common sorrel, their nut-brown foliage showing up against the light green vegetation around them.

Along the rhynes and ditches, the surface of the water is completely covered with a thin film of duckweed; while the reeds themselves, although not quite as high as an elephant’s eye, are certainly higher than mine. These waterways have at last got their own splash of colour, with tall, yellow flag irises – known locally as ‘butter-and-eggs’ – whose rich hue stands out from the duller greens and browns of the surrounding landscape. Described by the Victorian naturalist Richard Jeffries as ‘bright lamps of gold’, these stately plants brighten up even a dull June day.

Like every corner of the parish, Vole Road has its own special character. Here, the hedgerows are thicker, denser and closer together than the more open southern
and
eastern parts; and the landscape feels somehow more warm, snug and safe. Pheasants certainly think so: this is one of the few places where I regularly hear their distinctive, rough bark, and occasionally catch a glimpse of a cock bird strutting in the shadows of a tall hedgerow.

Pheasants have been in Britain for at least a thousand years, since the Norman Conquest, and it is thought they probably arrived even earlier, with the Romans. Originally from south-west Asia, they owe their ubiquity to being plump, easy to catch and good to eat: in some ways a fatal combination, yet also their trump card, for without their status as a game bird there would be far fewer. But in our parish, pheasants remain pretty thin on the ground. The land here is simply too wet for them to thrive, so there is little or no shooting; and without pheasant shooting there are usually very few pheasants. Certainly compared to the countryside in East Anglia they are quite a rarity here.

The biggest danger to the few resident pheasants comes from a supremely wily and adaptable local predator: the fox. And sure enough, as I head off northwards, I come across not just one, but two foxes, each standing alone in the centre of a large, open, recently mown field.

In recent years, as foxes have moved into our city centres, there has been much debate about the habits of this opportunistic mammal. Several observers have concluded that urban foxes are more or less the same as their rural cousins. Genetically this may be true, but behaviourally they are worlds apart. Having lived in both
city
and countryside, I know that if I so much as look at a rural fox, it will turn and run; whereas their urban cousins will stare you down with an expression bordering on insolence. In this part of rural England at least, foxes know to fear any man; even though I carry no weapon, and mean them no harm.

As the sun finally sets over Brent Knoll, the sky to the east is awash with rain, and the grey blanket is drifting rapidly eastwards, chasing the departing light. Jackdaws head west towards the church tower, chacking away into the gloom. And as night finally falls, and the villagers settle down to watch the ten o’clock news, first pinpricks, then splashes, and finally great sheets of rain begin to fall.

T
HE RAIN IS
, as always, welcomed by the village gardeners, whose lawns and flower beds are beginning to suffer from this long, dry spell. And welcomed, too, by the local farmers, including our neighbour Rick. I say neighbour, but although Rick owns the farmyard next door, he actually lives several miles away on the western side of the village. Like many farmers in these parts, he owns scattered parcels of land all over the parish and beyond, including the wet meadows of Tealham Moor.

Back in April, I bumped into Rick at the Highbridge Young Farmers’ seventy-fifth anniversary dinner and dance. As neither of us is known for his ballroom skills,
we
got talking about local customs, so many of which are dying out. He told me that before the war his late father Reg, something of a local legend, used to go bat-fowling.

To Rick’s surprise, I knew what he meant by this peculiar phrase. Also known as bird-batting, it involved using a torch to flush roosting birds, then catching them in a large net. Apparently Reg and his friends wandered along the village’s hedgerows on autumn nights, catching thrushes and blackbirds. ‘What happened to them?’ I asked innocently. ‘He ate them,’ Rick replied with commendable brevity.

Rick then tried out another local custom on me: ray-balling. This time, I had no idea what he meant, so he explained that it is a way of luring eels in order to catch them. And when he told me that he still goes out ray-balling on summer evenings, I asked if I might tag along.

T
HE INVITATION COMES
out of the blue, on the evening after the heavy rains. Children are fed, my weekly badminton game cancelled, and as dusk falls we head eastwards to Tealham Moor, filled with a delicious anticipation. We are a mixed bunch: Rick, his wife Heather, various sons, daughters-in-law and friends, and our leader Dennis. Large and bearded, with a ready wit, strong opinions and a jaw that gets plenty of exercise, Dennis is definitely a local character. Now in his sixties, he has been
ray-balling
for more than half a century, ever since his grandfather first took him out on a warm summer’s night, back in the 1950s.

With ray-balling, as with many country pursuits, the equation between effort and reward might seem tipped against it. The work required to assemble the equipment, all of which needs to be made at home, seems colossal. But as Dennis explains, with an eel providing more protein than a fillet steak, it is well worth it.

For an hour before sunset, in Rick’s farmyard, Dennis and Rick have threaded dozens of worms (collected by the bucketful the previous night) onto strong, stout pieces of thread. The worms form a series of concentric rings, which when dipped into the water fan out into a sphere: the ray-ball itself.

On the lower, northern bank of the Brue, next to a Second World War pillbox, Dennis finds the perfect spot. As dusk falls, we sit on the soft, yielding riverbank, and dip our metal poles into the murky water. Midges bite, bats flit in the star-studded darkness and, somewhere in the distance, a pheasant coughs twice, before falling silent.

Ray-balling is, Dennis tells me, a contact sport. Along the length of the pole I can feel the muddy bottom of the river and, following his advice, I slowly move the pole up and down, allowing the scent of the worms to disperse through the water. Eels hunt by smell, swimming upstream and eating everything they can find. Once they have grabbed onto something with their powerful jaws, it
takes
a lot to make them let go; a strength we hope to turn into a weakness, allowing us to catch them.

Time passes without a single bite, as the metallic calls of a nearby moorhen echo in the darkness. Then, without warning, I feel a tug on the pole, and a vibration. I lift it out of the water, but too tentatively, seeing a silvery flash disappear back into the river. I may have had first bite, but am annoyed that I let it go. ‘Now you can see why I call it a contact sport,’ laughs Dennis.

Twenty minutes later, another tug, another vibration. This time I lift the pole in one rapid sweep, and somehow manage to get it over the metal tub Dennis has placed in the river. I have judged it right: and a long, yellowish-green creature drops off the bunch of worms and into the tub. An eel: not a very big one, but an eel nonetheless.

Of all the creatures I have seen in the parish, the eel must surely have the most extraordinary life cycle. All the world’s baby eels – known as elvers – are born in the depths of the Sargasso Sea, in the Atlantic Ocean between the West Indies and Bermuda. Once hatched, these tiny fish drift across the ocean, carried by the warming currents of the Gulf Stream until, several years later, they reach the waters around Britain. Gradually, the tide washes them into our estuaries, including Bridgwater Bay to the west of here. Then they travel inland: some swimming upstream, others, incredibly, wriggling over the land. Once they are in the river system they feed and grow for many years. Finally, having reached maturity, they head back to the
Sargasso
Sea, a journey of some three thousand miles, where they lay their eggs and die.