The countryside in... July

Sarah Ryan has an unexpected encounter with a winged fisherman and an amphibian army on a showery walk

RAIN PITAPATS ON the brim of my hat as I walk; shoes scuffling through gravel; a blackbird singing in the hedgerow. It has been sunny for weeks, and this soft summer shower is polishing the leaves and softening dry cracks in the earth, and a cool green scent is rising from the ground.

The further down the lane I walk, the more pitted it becomes; grasses bulldoze a strip down the middle and push in at the verges. The hedges grow high enough to tangle with the trees’ lower branches, and the nettles, in turn, get in among the brambles. Their serrated leaves are creased and erect, a dark and dusty green, and between them hang clusters of seeds like bunches of tiny green grapes. Among them are red deadnettles, mallow, clover flowers and grasses bowed with seeds. Shades of purple are everywhere this month; even the grass seeds are tinged with mauve.

At the bottom of the hill, the track passes a giant oak, both haggard and stately at once. The birds are mostly quiet, hunkered among the leaves, kept low and still by the rain, but two crows heckle one another in the branches. Passing the oak, I enter the woods, and the quick pattering rain quiets for a while, replaced by the occasional thud of a heavy droplet. Overhead, among the branches, a large globe gathers at the tip of a leaf, stretches, and falls its final few feet to burst in a bright splash on the ground. One bounces from a bramble leaf and leaves it trembling with the impact.

Visitors to the pond

The woods are so green now and the plants so high that I can barely see the pond until I am standing at the bank. It is the heron that alerts me. I am allowed a glimpse of this fisherman: a poised white shape against the green leaves, before it rises, bill lifted, and flaps across the water. Then the pond comes into view, long and glossy green, the paler pondweed gathered like lace at its edges. Where the raindrops fall upon it, they sparkle like diamonds.

Around the other side of the pond, some of the thistles are in flower. Others have gone to seed, with hundreds crowded into each downy head, as soft as the fur under a cat’s chin. Some are still tightly packed, others beginning to open; the most mature are already rounding into fuzzy white globes. I cannot help but pluck a tuft. The tiny brown

“And when, upon some showery day, Into a path or public way A frog leaps out from bordering grass, Startling the timid as they pass, Do you observe him, and endeavour To take the intruder into favour”

Dorothy Wordsworth, ‘Loving and Liking: Irregular Verses Addressed to a Child’

quills at the bottom, so tightly compressed in their green casing, expand immediately. When I throw them upwards, they lift for a moment, then parachute to the ground.

On the move

Following the path around, I disturb the heron again, which flaps out from behind a curtain of willow, and a few paces later, a quick movement at my feet catches my eye. I barely see it: just a flicker in the mud, and, glancing down, I think at first that there is a beetle crawling over the path. But this little creature has four legs, not six, and there are two dark eyes on top of its head. It is a tiny frog: a perfect replica of the adult, but no bigger than my fingernail. Looking closer, I see another, and then a third, and my perspective suddenly snaps in. They are everywhere, springing into the grass and hopping across the path. I am motionless. These froglets have survived the frogspawn stage and the tadpole stage; no doubt many of them will wind up in the belly of the heron, but I certainly do not want any to be lost on my account. I wave my foot in front of me before taking the next step, watching carefully for any movements, then place it on the ground. It will take twice as long to get back to the other side of the pond in this way, but the rain has stopped, the air is damp, and the birds are starting to sing. I have plenty of time.

“Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July”

Lewis Carroll, ‘A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky’

Left to right: Fissures in the hard earth in need of moisture; tiny, knobbly nettle flower buds; through wispy purple grasses to the woods; a vivid Red Admiral on wet bramble leaves.

Walking knee deep in bracken in the lush woodland on a fresh July day.

Sarah Ryan grew up in the Scottish Borders, climbing trees and poring over wildlife books. Those habits have little changed, and she still makes time daily to get out into the woods nearby, or at weekends to venture further afield. Inspiration comes from Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd, Kathleen Raine, Chris Watson and outside the window.

Left to right: The mirrored pond emerges through the trees; with its daggerlike bill and neck curled into an S-shape, a heron takes flight; a froglet makes a bid for freedom; thistle lunch for a goldfinch.