Fifty years ago my first countryside article was published, A Kestrel Kills in Liverpool. The little falcon, nesting on the Anglican cathedral in 1976, until recently was replaced by a peregrine. Back in the day any self-respecting wildlife writer used a heavyweight Imperial typewriter, an SLR film camera, snail mail, a landline and an extensive library of reference books. It took a week to get something filed.
How times have changed. Today, with the flush of springtime attracting all manner of wee beasties, I photographed bees and beetles with my mobile phone in the Fairy Hill garden. It’s been useful to track the many changes here – two years ago, I eradicated all alien species including rhododendron, leylandii and laurel. The non-natives were replaced with hornbeam, rowan and hazel, and further planting projects have paid off in spades: native pears and foxgloves, flag iris in the pond, delicate sorrel in the shade of a stone wall, and the more robust dock.
So no typical borders here – and no surprise to find an iridescent green dock beetle (Gastrophysa viridula) munching into the dock. Sadly, they also enjoy sorrel, but I am hoping that they do not find the large batch of rhubarb near the compost heap – it’s all a balancing act.
Its taste for dock could, in fact, make this attractive beetle a widely deployed one, as dock is commonly seen as a problem, competing with other plants and causing issues if eaten by cows and horses. If experiments in Wales and Ireland are conclusive, Gastrophysa viridula could be sold to farmers as a cost-effective alternative to chemical herbicides.
Meanwhile, I’m zooming in on yet more smaller beauties, many of which display the exotic and metallic colorations more usually seen in the Amazon. From a bronze shield bug that landed on my sweater looking like an extra from the Star Wars bar to a soldier beetle and the dozy cockchafer which blundered into my face at dusk. The latter was described wonderfully by my erstwhile neighbour Robert Burns in his poem The Twa Dogs, “An’ darker gloamin brought the night / The bum-clock [cockchafer] humm’d wi’ lazy drone.”
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
