Nature watch: May

Country Living online 01.05.2008

Take in the scent of seasonal flowers, catch sight of wildlife on the wing, and meet young deer

young roe deer Were I an exile dreaming of England, May is the month I would pine for the most. The sunken lanes around my home are thick with the lily-white bells of ramsons; with one whiff of their pungent garlic breath I would recognise west Dorset with my eyes shut. Roe deer give birth in the bracken-smothered combes; the swifts are back, scything over the village rooftops, and when dusk falls, noctule bats emerge to feed.

Insects lead brief lives but few are as short as that of the adult mayfly. After a year spent underwater as an ugly aquatic nymph, it finally emerges with glistening wings and slender tail to complete its life cycle in perhaps only a few hours. No wonder its Latin name is ephemera. In May these frail creatures can be seen dancing and swarming over clear chalk streams and mating on the wing. Afterwards, the males die and fall into the water.
When the females have laid their eggs on the surface of the water they, too, die, and both are snapped up by the ever-hungry trout.

Brian Jackman