High Elms Country Park near Downe is a procession of pushchairs, straining dogs and track-suited walkers meandering and marching under tall pines and Wellingtonias (Sequoiadendron giganteum). At the top of the hill, protected by grandstands of tall ash (Fraxinus excelsior) and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), are the Sunday golfers. The hedgerow birds hide from men hunting their lost handicaps…
Tag: butterflies
Hunting Pinks
The wheat and oil seed rape has dried to a soft gold in a blink. The huge fields are somehow less mundane than when growing dull, deep green. The tangle of tall rape below Farningham Wood holds an abundance of house sparrows and linnets together with a smattering of corn burnings. The sparrows have finished breeding in the nearby…
Up Fackenden Down
The change in the meadows at Fackenden Down over the last two weeks of June is marked; the fragrant orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) are in their prime in mid June but tiring by the end of the month whereas the pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) were emerging and now are at their best. Some are a deep purple in the evening light. Fragrant…
Lovćen Mountain
Lovćen is a mountain within the heart of Montenegro’s coastal range, rising abruptly from the dark maquis and olive-clad hills between the coastal towns of Kotor and Budva to descend more gently inland to the old capital of Cetinje. The mountain is the most accessible of them all, as there is a road running round the base…
Ascent of Rumija 2
Above the dark green, ancient sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) woodland near Livari, the hay is neatly stacked in the corner of a small field with a protective plastic sheet, like a skull cap, and weighted with old tyres and water-filled plastic bottles. The crops in the field, onions, potatoes and courgette, are all well advanced…
Orahovo and Kučka Korita
The village of Orahovo with its small, grass high, hay meadows is enveloped by the shrubby hornbeam forest that is characteristic of the low limestone hills. Above, by the side of the winding road to Kučka Korita, there are small glades in the woodland full of plants and butterflies. The breeding birds are quieter now…
Chasing Apollos in the Rijeka Cijevna Valley
The Rijeka Cijevna (River Cijevna) runs down a wild, steep-sided valley and forms the boundary between Albania and Montenegro to the east of Podgorica. There is a small road that follows the river up the narrowing valley passing farms, a small school, an even smaller church and a disused border control booth; the road crosses the river…
Godinje’s Knight of the Garter
Godinje is a pretty village the other side of the hill from Virpazar. Almost every house has neat signs on the road advertising their home-produced Vino, Rakija and Med (honey). The owners sit under the shade of a tree on the terrace or on a chair behind a desk laden with bottles eyeing the passing traffic. The…
Into the Kučka Krajina Mountains
The road to tiny Bukumirsko Jezero (Lake) high in the Kučka Krajina mountains, runs north from Podgorica for some 40km, passing the small villages of Ubli and Kržanja. The road on April 29th is blocked by a lens of lumpy snow on a north facing section about five kilometres from the lake; so I never make it…
Poseljani’s Rich History and Habitats
The road winds above Lake Skadar with panoramas of lake and forest around each hairpin; through the village of Kruševica where beekeepers tend the hives and signs hang above tables of laden with tall bottles; on through pretty Komarno, and, at the end of a steep slope with lake below, a new road descending the steep valley to the old…
Virpazar’s Glanville Fritillaries
On the hot afternoon of April 22nd after a long day, I saw my first fritillary butterfly of the year, which settled within spitting distance at the top of an area of long, abandoned terraced fields not far from the village of Kruševica on the Virpazar to Rijeka Crnojevića road. At the time, I was eating a bright red…
Evening’s End on Velika Plaza
Velika Plaza on this bright evening is huge, wild and exhilarating with a strong onshore wind, warm and welcome after a hot day; it is also cluttered with ramshackle summer cabins and endless, ugly litter, much probably brought up during winter storms but much also discarded by visitors. This evening the great beach is almost empty of people…