About Mountsorrel > Outdoors > Nature Diary > Summer 2002
What are your images of the countryside in summer? The traditional forerunner of summer is the first swallow and you know it has arrived when you hear a cuckoo. The swallows arrived in Mountsorrel in April but the only cuckoo I have heard was in Nottinghamshire. Has any one else heard a cuckoo?
The heavy rain in March and again in May has made the fields and hedgerows very green and lush. The May blossom was very good and the smell of the flowers after a shower is a summer aroma to remember. It has also brought out the differences in the hay fields along the River Soar. Some are a golden haze of buttercups and, earlier, other had a mist of white ladies smocks. How different and more interesting are such fields when compared to the over-green and boringly uniform fields treated with weed killers? The natural, untreated fields are a good place for butterflies and other insects. One of my favourite summer images is seeing an orange-tip butterfly. At first glance it looks like an ordinary, small white or 'cabbage white' butterfly but the male has bright orange tips to its wings. The female is less distinctive with black tips to the wings. It only flies through April and May so look out for it now. It feeds on hedge mustard and on the ladies smocks mentioned above.
What are the sounds of summer? I have mentioned the
cuckoo but the twitters of swallows and the screams of swifts chasing each
other through the streets are good candidates. Swallows nest right in the
middle of the village and I like to think their ancestors nested in the
stables of the coaching inns along the main road. Mountsorrel is too far
north for nightingales but blackcaps and garden warblers can be heard locally
and the early morning song of a male blackbird can be almost as tuneful.