Spring delights from butterflies to blackthorn bushes

IT’S mid-April and the winds have still been cold, threatening the apple blossom on Ann’s apple trees. One, sown from seed thirty years ago has grown to produce beautiful apples, sweet with a lemony taste, half Cox, half russet in looks. Now the sweet pink buds are unfolding for hopefully another tasty year.

But today is warm and we cycle down May blossom-covered Botetoe lane and the sun dappled peace of the bridleway to Pendarves Nature Reserve. We see the beginnings of the annual wondrous misty blue drift of heaven that brings such joy to our inner most heartbeat of such beauty in the Cornish countryside.

However, we know another secret down this delectable valley, that it is loved by the beautiful white orange tip butterfly, perfect in its bold complementary pattern. And there they were, not just one but whole groups fluttering orange-white in thrall to the gentle warm sheltered breeze, flying on the wing of such delightful gentleness.

And sitting in the sun by a rippling brook was a white-legged immature adult damselfly, new and fresh, suckling the dew patterned vapours of its watery surrounds. Found in southern England the bio-diversity maps shows a presence across the Carnmenellis Moors to the Helford River. Lovely within its contemplating of nature’s possibilities.

Nearby sitting on a log we had our picnic but we were soon entranced by a pair of jackdaws. Their characters always amusing I realised the male was taking food to a hole in the apex of a tree, back and forth, working hard to keep his family fed. Usually noticed by the public around roofs and chimney pots with its “chak, chak” sounds and the screechings of its young.

Jackdaws love eye contact and recognise human faces, studies by zoologist Auguste Von Bayern concluded that they respond to human expression.

We went further up the valley where it becomes wilder and more boulder strewn. I wanted to see a very unusual blackthorn wood or copse, it’s long straggly black trunks eaten bare by livestock, the tops were richly covered by a foamy blossom of whiteness against the perfect light blue sky.

They seemed to mirror the perfect primitiveness of this hidden gem of an ancient hidden valley.

We maybe more familiar with the more common species such as jackdaws and blackthorn in contrast to the more rare intricate and elusive white-legged damselfly but they all soar in our imaginations, all integral to our planet, the heartbeat that makes our earth so beautiful and worth saving.