The ‘Living’ Churchyard - July

by Nigel Symington

One of the joys of coming back to Fletching to survey the churchyard is always the meeting up with old friends and the making of new ones. I don’t mean just the human variety - though this is also always a pleasure - but seeing species that were there last year and then new ones that haven’t been there in the past.

A nw friend this month is the Large Skipper. One of the ‘Golden Skippers’ - so called because of their rich orange-gold colour - this butterfly is widespread across Sussex and may be found where common species of grass grow in taller clumps. They lay their white, bun-shaped eggs on a common grass called Cock’s-foot, making themselves a shelter by binding the edges of the grass blade together with silk threads.

A returning friend is the Common Blue, one of our prettiest butterflies. One of the advantages of the cool, overcast weather that we have seen this year is that butterflies are less skitters: this female - the females have wings that are mostly brown with a row of oranges spots round the edge, while the male wings are blue all over - sat for several minutes on top of a grass stem, waiting for the sun to come out an warm it up to a point at which it could fly.

A frustration - and a challenge - of looking for life in the meadows finding so many species that I’m unable to name. Three different sorts of bumblebees are active pollinating flowers in the grass. But which of our 27 British species are they? Even my field guide admits that identifying bumblebees challenging. A long-horned beetle sits on a yellow hawkweed head: which of the 68species is that? And then a passing fire with eyes much sharper than mine spots a small spider running across one of the gravestones: around 670 species in this country and most of them only have Latin names.

Much is written about the benefits of lifelong learning, but I shall have to live to be very old indeed if I’m to find - let alone name - even half of what is living in our churchyard.