Every day people stroll, run or cycle along roads with rarely a glance to the right or left, often in worlds of their own, with scant regard for the small creatures that abound in the hedges, along the low walls, or in the grass alongside the pavements. Yes, many will admire some of the brightly coloured flowers, or the neatly trimmed lawns, but when cars or bikes are passing, there are often sounds to be heard; obviously birdsong, but at lower levels there can be the gentle hum of bees. Even without those sounds, there is activity a-plenty.
I had spotted the bees, as I walked to the Post Office and back, so I broke off from what I had planned and took out a camera and over two short sorties with two different lenses set out to capture what was there in just a short stretch of the main road.
There were bees, tiny moths, a ladybird, spiders, one minuscule pale insect I had never seen, hoverflies — some were too agile and shy for me to capture. We rely on many yet give them barely a passing thought but, when you look closer at some, you would see that many of these creatures have bodies of incredible complexity, and possess skills we can only dream of possessing. I can highly recommend stopping by a hedgerow in the early evening of a warm summer day when you see a hoverfly, and just watch their flying skills, as they lift off from a leaf perform darting swoops, the stop, hover a moment, often swing through ninety degrees at the same spot, then climb vertically, and stop again. I have found that in areas of mixed light and shade, they will often hover in the sunlit spot, then get mobbed by other hoverflies who then take over the same point in space.
On this occasion it was too early for that behaviour, and one hoverfly simply relaxed, preened itself with its long legs, then poohed! The tiny moth I spotted was barely two millimetres in diameter, and way too energetic for me to capture. And the ladybird simply burrowed deeper in the hedge, and never reappeared. Gerald Durrell, author of ‘My Family and Other Animals’ had far more exotic ‘mini-beasts’ on Corfu, but English hedgerows are far from bereft of tiny insects that are interesting to study. I would highly recommend some words from WH Davies — ‘What is this Life, if full of Care, we ne’er have Time to Stop and Stare’. A day or so back I took some shots of water boatmen — these are tiny creatures that can be found on streams and lakes, who can walk on water, and they skip along the surface with incredible agility.
When I photograph flowers, I very often try to capture insects that either pollinate those flowers or search for smaller prey who feed therein. There is a world of life within a hedge, and I gain much personal satisfaction in taking photos of this world; it is endlessly fascinating, and highly therapeutic.
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