Winged beauties hidden among flora

Dreoilín, dreoilín where is your nest?

THIS verse from a “wran boys” song, asking the unfortunate wren to reveal its nest, brings holly and ivy together, as in so many other songs – perhaps it’s because they are both dark green and thrive in the lightless understorey of forests.

And they both magically shine in shafts of winter sunlight, lit up like stars in the night.

For a short few weeks at this time of the year, ivy flowers bathed in sunlight are a feast for the eyes, fascinating to the walker not only for their intrinsic beauty and curious form but for the bees and pretend-bees, wasps, pretend-wasps and butterflies that swarm over them. Arranged in globular heads, in autumn they secrete abundant nectar.

As one passes along country lanes, their presence is signalled by the hum of bees.

A treat awaits anyone who has time to pause and look.

Hoverflies, sun flies and narcissus flies hang in the air above the pale green globes; they alight and move across the stalked flowers like animated jewellery.

How and why does nature make these humble short-lived creatures so beautiful?

They are, after all, only flies, having, in this case, the singular purpose of pollination. Surely, they could perform this as efficiently if they were monochrome?

The globes of flowers are themselves marvels of construction.

What human builder could create such lovely shapes, the tiny flower-petals emerging from the soft, rounded tips – tips that will, later, turn black and hard and catch the winter light as if shellaced. Half of the fascination of nature must be in the ingenuity of its construction.

We humans make beautiful things and our art often mimics nature. It can hardly avoid doing so, even if the artist never saw the source, because there are more things in heaven and earth than we have ever dreamed of in our philosophy and each one is distinctive and unique.

Some of the glittering creatures that hover over the ivy or alight on its flowers or leaves resemble wasps: mimicry is a defence tactic. Predators will stay away: wasps are not to be trifled with. They will readily sting and have many doses of toxins in their tiny armoury.

Bumble-bees, carder bees, solitary bees and cuckoo bees also roam the hedgerows at this time of year, each species a distinctive colour, size and form – wondrous are the variations of nature, the variations on a theme, if one has time to stop and observe them.

The cuckoos are so called because they lay their eggs in the nests of other bees, usually pollen-collecting species.

Butterflies also frequent the ivy.

For day after day last week – this glorious late September – an ivy-swathed cabbage palm in the garden was resplendent with red admirals, large black butterflies with striking red flashes and white spots on their wings. The old cabbage-palm, long since dead, had become a veritable butterfly-bush as fetching as any buddleia.

These days, foraging on the white flowers of yarrow now everywhere on the roadside ditches is a small, very pretty fly that walkers might look out for, with an iridescent green carapace and red eyes.

These flies sit absolutely still as if they were placed on the snow white flowers for ornament.

They are drinking the nectar, I think. I can’t find them in the books but they’re certainly common, and harmless it seems.

A neighbour tells me he’s seen starlings eating blackberries. I can’t blame them; they’re the ripest, least-wormed and sweetest for years. Between ivy flowers, bees blackberries, a mile-long walk can take me an hour!