The ‘Living’ Churchyard - June

by Nigel Symington

Do you have a favourite insect? In a cold, late Spring such as we’ve seen this year, I feel grateful to any insect that dares to show its face. Especially when it’s as pretty as the Red Mason Bee, which I saw sunbathing on gravestones. This is a solitary bee – it doesn’t have queens or form a colony. It is a striking insect with its black head and thorax, and the back part of its body a bright red or deep orange.

Another insect to brave the cold is the Bee-fly. Looking like a small flying teddy bear with a long spike in front, it could be a bee with a frightening sting. In fact neither of these assumptions is true. It is a fly. It has two wings not four. You’d need to take a very high-speed picture to see this. Its wings beat very fast as it hovers in front of flowers. The spike is a proboscis: hollow like an elephant’s trunk, the fly uses it to suck up nectar.

Butterflies have been notable by their absence this year. A Holly Blue flits across the ground, and a Small White is feeding from the Ground Ivy that forms a blue haze in one quarter. In spite of the wind and the cold, we have just seen the arrival of Painted Ladies.

These amazing butterflies overwinter in North Africa and Arabia. They migrate to England when conditions become too hot there. With shorter autumn days, they migrate South again. They stop to breed on their journeys, passing through up to six generations in a year.

How the later generations find their way to the home of their great-great grandparents is one of the mysteries of nature.
This year, the plan again is to cut and rake half of the meadow area in late June. The exact dates will depend on the weather. Many thanks to all those who helped with this last year: if you’d like to do so again, or if anyone else would like to join in the work, you’ll be very welcome.