Fascinating viewing at feeding time

AT this time of year, watching birds at the feeder is never more fascinating as parents troop out their offspring and teach them the location of a free lunch.

And not only the location, but the most effective strategy for dining.

The blue tits have brought four young to the peanut feeder, the great tits five, the greenfinches three. The blackbirds also have three offspring, which the mother (there is no sign of the father) feeds on leftovers of dall (spiced lentils) and porridge which I put out. The two junior robins, with brown speckled breasts, have learned to peck the breadcrumbs for themselves, and the fledgling chaffinches wait with their parents beneath the feeder for scraps to fall. All this happens within 10 feet of our dining room window and it is, indeed, a pleasant surprise to see a new clutch of fledglings appear and partake.

A sparrowhawk snatched one – we found the wings and feathers. I don’t condemn that. Cats, however, are a bane and, day by day, we see these little families decimated and find small corpses in the garden.

Meanwhile, those who enjoy nature watching might like to look out for black, slightly hairy caterpillars with yellow spots and gossamer nests on the leaves of the purple-top thistles.

These are the issue of the painted lady butterflies we saw dipping and dancing over them in early June. In a field near my home there were at least 100 visiting a thistle patch on a sunny afternoon.

A few days earlier, walking the Seven Heads in west Cork, we had encountered clouds of these butterflies making a landfall in Ireland after their epic flight from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Some would continue to Iceland, even Greenland. Exceptional rain had nurtured their food plants on the fringe of the Sahara and Europe enjoyed a huge inward migration. They could bring nothing but good, pollinators of our wild plants, kaleidoscopic colours in the air.

Strong fliers and long-distance migrants, this was a boom year for painted ladys. Now, even as the orange and black wings of the first-comers fade and they near the end of their brief and adventurous lives, a second generation, born in Ireland, thrives on the thistles and promises us new, bright wings flashing in the late summer sun.

Meanwhile, the thistles are devoured, good news for pastoralists.

Oh, for an irruption of cinnabar moths to consume the ragwort now burgeoning on road verges unchecked by local authorities – once upon a time these very authorities prosecuted farmers that allowed ragwort in their fields.

I also see Japanese knotweed on the verges. For this, there is some excuse. While in Japan it is held back by parasites, in Europe there is no natural defence and it has defeated every attempt, chemical and mechanical, to control it. It has broken through asphalt car parks and tennis courts, toppled tombstones in graveyards and burst through dwelling house floors.

Now, however, Britain’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs plans to wage war on knotweed by introducing its native predator – the jumping Japanese plant louse. The louse lays eggs on the plant and the hatched larvae suck out its sap. “We tested more than 180 native species of insects found on knotweed in Japan and picked the jumping plant louse because it is the only one that is specific to JK,” said Dr Richard Shaw, a principal investigator at the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International and this means “it will not spread to other plant species”.

Good news. I hope it works and doesn’t end in tears. Introductions and accidental vagrants have an uncanny talent for making themselves at home, adapting to feed on any old thing they can find, be it spud haulms (God forbid), cabbages or silage grass. The knotweed was, after all, itself an introduction, highly prized by Victorian gardeners for its lacy white flowers. But, nowadays there is better science and more awareness of the perils, so we have reason to be optimistic that, however resilient is the bolting knotweed, the jumping plant louse will soon halt its gallop.