Hazel and Vanessa
I’m out tonight in the company of Hazel and Vanessa. We’re in the fields of South Devon together. Hazel is laid back and Vanessa is sunning herself in the warm, low evening sunshine. Hazel is Corylus avellana, the Hazel Tree, and forms this wonderful hedge:
There are nuts forming which will feed many species in the autumn:
Vanessa is this Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta:
It’s forty years since I saw and identified my first Red Admiral and noted it in my nature notebooks:
There’s also a Common Red Soldier Beetle on an umbellifer. In fact there are hundreds of them :
The light is exceptional:
All of these fields are earmarked for residential development and will soon be 1,275 homes. My friend Dave says that means “NEWSFLASH …… 1,275 Harvest mice to lose their homes !”
It also means that the Barn Owl I’ve been seeing here and its family will also lose their home.