At the time of writing July has been more miss than hit, with the cool, wet and overcast weather of May and June continuing into what should be the height of summer. The fields of barley and wheat are still green and holding up harvest and the leaves of our hedgerow oaks, normally leathery and thick with honey dew by now, look fecund and fresh still.

Understandably, butterfly numbers have been woeful, although reserve staff at NWT Foxley Wood have again recorded purple emperor butterflies. After falling extinct at Foxley in the 70's, this spectacular creature returned in 2019, to much cheer. The cool, wet weather though, means insects in general have been in short supply. Although my lawn, and every other plant it seems, grows another inch every time my back is turned. Of course, with wildlife there are always winners and losers, their fate borne by the fickle nature of our weather.            

I’m always surprised by wildlife’s ability to survive, and on occasions when one sees something unexpected in a seemingly hostile place, it is always heartening. I was struck by this recently when driving home from a ‘team day’, hosted by colleagues from the Suffolk Wildlife Trust at Carlton Marshes. (We had a delightful guided trailer ride around the out-of-bounds areas of the reserve, and we saw a red-footed falcon at close quarters!) Anyway, I digress, on my way home I stopped at the junction of the A47 and A148 just outside Norwich, one of the county’s busiest junctions.

Sitting at a red traffic light, my eyes wandered to between the crash barriers. As the lights turned green (having been rudely hooted from behind), I glimpsed sight of something magnificent! For amongst the usual roadside detritus was a carpet of pyramidal orchids. They were as tall as the sun bleached traffic cone that sat beside them; and splendidly defiant in their beauty. It’s a marvel that they have flourished in this here, this thin strip of central reservation which has likely seen its fair share of herbicide too! Isn’t nature BRILLIANT.  

At NWT Upton Broad and Marshes, a small population of a carnivorous plant, the rare lesser bladderwort, has re-appeared to show off its odd little yellow flowers. The digging of several new shallow turf ponds, and the likely exposure of a seed bank, has brought this strange aquatic flower back to the reserve. Although it was originally re-discovered in 2018 in a wheel rut! Living in nutrient poor conditions they have evolved to supplement their ‘diet’ with tiny aquatic organisms. They achieve this with the help of small bubble like ‘bladders’ which can be found along their leaf stems. In the lesser bladderwort’s case it dangles a thread in the water that carries several ranks of bladders. Each tiny bladder is under negative pressure, with a trap door set to spring open when a trigger hair is touched by unsuspecting prey.

Once the unfortunate creature is sucked inside, the door slams behind it, and all in a staggering 0.3 milliseconds. The bladder contains a complex mix of bacteria and enzymes, slowly absorbing the tiny prisoner after first turning it into soup. The greater bladderwort, also found at Upton, can catch prey as large as water fleas and even newly hatched tadpoles. All the bladderwort species are shy to flower, with the lesser bladderwort doing so very rarely. The almost impossible to find intermediate bladderwort has never been known to flower in the UK. 

Whilst on the subject of the rare and strange, NWT’s Wilder Communities Manager, Gemma Walker was sent a photo of a very odd looking insect sitting on a bed of gravel in a jam-jar! After confirming with colleagues, the insect was identified as a mole cricket. This is a relatively large insect of up to 4.5 cm long, but despite its size it is extremely elusive. Favouring ancient meadows and old orchards, the species has suffered serious decline since the mid- 20^th century, with short-lived colonies in southern England appearing and disappearing from time to time. The mole cricket has large forelegs, modified for digging, and as its name suggests it spends most of its time underground, only venturing out of its burrow at night. An important detail concerning this insect’s discovery is that it was in a bag of gravel from Horsford gravel pit, making it only the second known record for Norfolk. The insect was released unharmed by its experience, but leaving us with more questions than answers.                               

Finally, I mentioned in last month’s newsletter that there was a distinct lack of swallows and house martins this summer. Numbers of swallows did pick up a little, with George Baldock, the warden at NWT Cley and Salthouse Marshes reporting fantastic news concerning swallow breeding success at the reserve. He explained: “Having not bred at Cley for several years, a pair of swallows moved into Daukes hide during Covid, when one of the hide’s window flaps was left open whilst closed to the public. There is now at least one pair in each of the six hides on the reserve, and every brood so far has successfully fledged”.  With, on average, four young fledging from each nest this means at least  twenty-four new swallows in the air, and with swallows continuing to nest through August, hopefully a few more before the end of summer.           

Top Tip

August is a good month to look for white admiral butterflies. Head to Foxley Wood and keep your eyes peeled. Black with a white slash across the wing, they gracefully glide through woodland rides.

At rest their underwing is particularly beautiful. They seem to like damp woodland with plenty of honeysuckle, the food plant of their caterpillars. Flowering brambles in dappled sunlight is always a great place to look for white admiral.