It’s the time of year when everything feels vibrant. The flowers are blooming, the days are long, and it’s not yet unbearably hot! Amazingly, by July, many bird species have already had their first brood of chicks and may well be settling down to start another. Insects have emerged from their winter slumbers, and dragonflies will be shedding their aquatic juvenile skins and taking to the skies.
These middle months are my personal favourite of the year, and they’re a great time to spot wildlife and plant species which you might otherwise overlook. The landscape of Moray, particularly along the rivers Nairn and Findhorn, is lush and thick with biodiversity. So, in this blog, I’m going to point out five species which you probably walk past every day and never really notice. Use this as the push you need to slow down, take note of the little signs around you, and enjoy the incredible selection of plants and animals which call Moray home.
Badgers
Okay, so we’ve started with a trickier one. Because although you almost certainly do walk past a badger every day, you probably don’t see one. There are a whopping estimated 40,000 badgers in Scotland, but because they’re nocturnal, it’s unlikely that you’ll see them unless you’re out at night. At this time of year, the young badgers are out and about, exploring their surroundings. We’re also lucky to have exceptionally long daylight hours in Moray, meaning that walking near a badger sett from about 7pm gives you a good chance of spotting a youngster on the prowl. When a badger is out of its sett, it’s mainly hunting. Badgers are omnivores and will have a go at almost anything, including slugs, birds, hedgehogs, worms, roots, flowers and, often, bird seed from feeders! Typically, a main sett houses five or six individuals, and all these animals will have a hierarchy. The youngsters at this time of year are establishing themselves in these family groups.
If the weather gets very warm, it may make it uncomfortable for badgers to sleep, and you might even be lucky enough to find an individual sleeping outside its sett to stay a bit cooler. It’s also the badgers’ secondary mating season; they have their first in spring. Badgers have a neat trick called “delayed implantation”. Basically, even though females might mate in spring or summer, they might not get pregnant right away. Badgers do this so that their young are born when the days are starting to warm up and there’s more food around in February and March.
Dragonflies
Midsummer is peak dragonfly season. It is the time when these insects transition from their juvenile stage to their adult aerial hunter life stage. In June and July, the nymphs emerge from the water, climb up a plant stem and ‘unzip’ their outer shell, emerging as the recognisable hunters we know. Newly emerged adults spend their first week away from water, hunting and feeding to mature and strengthen. Walking near the rivers and ponds of Moray can offer a glimpse of these insects darting around. They are exquisite acrobats and have been shown to predict where their prey will be; so rather than simply chasing down a meal, they can ambush it from above.
After a week or so, the males return to the water’s edge and start to establish territories. They can be extremely aggressive and, if you’re walking near still water in July, you’ll see males chasing off any rivals. If they’re successful, they will find a mate, clasp hold of each other and lay their eggs back at the water’s edge, ready for the next generation of dragonflies to start their lives.
Poppies
Poppies are one of those plants which we don’t really associate with summer because of Armistice Day and remembrance, but the mythology attached to the poppy is why we wear one in November.
According to one myth, the Greek goddess of grain and harvest, Demeter, had a daughter, Persephone, who was incredibly beautiful and caught the eye of the god of the underworld: Hades. He fell madly in love with her and stole her away, taking her back to his kingdom. Her mother was beside herself with grief. She was the goddess of the crops, and so when she grieved, the crops and grasses died away. So, the gods gave her the poppy because of its soothing and soporific properties. This is the opium poppy, of course, not a Moray poppy, but the myth is a good one, so I hope you’ll indulge me! The poppy became a symbol of remembrance and relief to the Greeks.
Incidentally, this story continues. Hades was eventually commanded to return Persephone for six months of the year. This was how the Greeks explained the seasons: for the six months when Persephone was in the underworld, the earth was plunged into darkness and all the plants died, but when she returned to the land of the living, everything would grow again in spring and summer.
It’s a nice story because it shows us how close some myths are to scientific ideas too.
Poppies flower wonderfully in June and July, and you’ll see them all over the fields and meadows, providing a valuable food source for pollinators like bees and wasps.
Swallows
Mid-summer is the swallows’ peak season. They are in the thick of a frantic feeding frenzy, making the most of the long daylight hours and the sudden warm-weather explosion of insects. The first brood of chicks will be pretty much fledged by now and taking to the wing, and you may see some clumsy first flights and the telltale chirruping of youngsters trying to learn from their parents. Look up. You’re likely to see swallows and their cousins, house martins and sand martins, perched on telephone wires and fence posts.
A single nest of hungry chicks needs about 6,000 insects a day, and so to meet this demand, you’ll often spot the parents doing high-speed acrobatics around the fields and even skimming the tops of ponds and rivers. In this last instance, they are often trying to catch emerging insects like mayflies as they appear at the water’s surface.
My favourite fact about swallows is that we can use them as a natural barometer! On warm, sunny days, air currents carry midges and flies high into the sky, so the swallows hunt high up. When a summer storm or cold front approaches, air pressure pushes the insects down, meaning you will see the swallows darting dramatically low across the grass.
Skylarks
Finally, listen out for skylarks. Mid-summer is when these little birds are really working overtime, flinging themselves high into the sky and somehow managing to pour out that endless, tumbling song while also raising a family on the ground below. They don’t nest in trees or hedges, but in simple, grass-lined cups tucked into rough grass, crops and open moorland, which means they are far more vulnerable than they sound.
At this time of year, many pairs will be feeding a second brood, and some may even be getting ready for a third. The chicks leave the nest after only eight to ten days, long before they can fly, so the grass can be full of tiny speckled youngsters running between the stems like little mice while their parents dash about finding spiders, caterpillars, beetles and grasshoppers for them.
So, if you’re out walking through fields, machair or moorland this summer, please stick to paths, keep dogs close and take extra care where the grass looks undisturbed. That famous song above your head might just be coming from a parent with a hidden family right under your feet. For me, the skylark is one of those birds that epitomises summer. The song is at its best in midsummer, and on a warm day you’ll see the parents soaring above you before fluttering down again.
That tumbling display is both territorial and a means of distracting predators. It’s often compared to a falling leaf as the adults tumble back to earth before pausing and rising back up again.