Flights of fancy on a summer’s stroll

A FEW months ago a reader told me a pair of elegant, ringed pigeons had arrived at his farmyard and settled in, roosting in a barn.

For a single racing pigeon to stray is not uncommon: it rests overnight and then flies on. But two pigeons arriving and settling down? Were they “flying the coop”, absconding to a pre-arranged plan? Was the pigeon-fancier mating them with birds they didn’t fancy? Was it an elopement – “Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away...” – and was the farmhouse on the shores of Dunmanus Bay, in west Cork, their Reno, Nevada or Gretna Green?

Or was it just a sudden, mad, impetuous moment that sent them winging away from the flock, leaving behind all that competitiveness and regimentation and pigeon-coop super-diet to lead a free life and raise squabs that would never wear a ring? Unlikely as it seems, subsequent developments argue for a tryst. Setting up home in the tolerant farmer’s yard, far from the confines of the dove cote, they built a nest and, as spring arrived, two white eggs were laid and in due course, two squabs were hatched.

In time, the squabs fledged and, along with the parents, scratched and pecked around the farmyard. In early June all four birds suddenly left and my reader, the farmer, assumed he’d seen the last of them.

However, two weeks ago, the parent birds returned as suddenly as they had departed. West Cork has always attracted those with romantic notions of a life far from uniformity and competition: perhaps these pigeons – alternative pigeons, high-bred and sensitive – decided to “opt out” of the rat-race, so to speak.

Such birds are not your common-or-garden wood pigeons that coo as if demented and wake commuters in leafy suburbs having first decorated the bonnets of their expensive cars. They are closer in spirit to the wild rock doves that hurtle along the cliff faces of The Sheeps Head and Beara, a strain of pigeon that was never domesticated. Keeping clear of man, they are of the same blue stripe and slate grey colour, nesting in caves and on crags far from human reach.

These days, when we take country walks, wood pigeons often explode from the low, leafy hedges, making a helluva fuss. We have a pair which nest in the garden and bathe in the stream. We also have nesting blue tits and great tits, and I have recently resolved to see to it that the latter earn the rent for the nest boxes we have provided.

From now on they shall hunt caterpillars and feed themselves. My wife’s carefully nurtured spinach and cabbages are as full of holes as Chantilly lace due to what, I believe, is the cabbage moth.

As noted in a recent column, a great tit pair feeding young can destroy 7,000-8,000 caterpillars and assorted insects in three weeks. The pastel green caterpillars of the small white butterfly – called the cabbage moth in the United States – can also quickly make a large cabbage leaf look like a string vest. However, our caterpillars are earth coloured, with a yellow head. As far as I can see, they are Mamestra brassicae – and as cabbage- and spinach-shredders, they take the prize.

In general, however, I am delighted to have butterflies around the garden. These days, I regularly see magnificent silver-washed fritillaries and dark green fritillaries flitting about in the yard outside my workroom window, large orange butterflies with black patterns on their wings.

The buddleia, now in flower, attracts small tortoiseshells, resplendent in new-born colours. Entirely missing so far are the painted ladys from North Africa – and yet last year there were tens of thousands. Very few red admiral, either: I’ve seen just three.

But meadow browns and ringlets by the dozen flit over the old meadow beyond our stream. This year it is colonised by yellow bartsia, a cowslip-like plant standing about five inches tall, with sticky buds.

Interspersed with the bartsia is dark purple seal-heal, some daisies, silverweed and clover. The face of the meadow is speckled with colour. The thistles that fed the painted pady caterpillars are almost entirely absent this year, and the ragwort has receded to the meadow margins.