An Afternoon

Yesterday afternoon I had a simple plan - to go for a walk on the downs. Striding merrily along on the dry turf, I might spot the odd early flying butterfly (there have already been reports, from elsewhere, of the Green Hairstreak). However, like many a simple plan before it, mine was soon ganging thoroughly agley, as I discovered that trains don't run on Sundays on the line I needed. A swift rethink took me, rather laboriously, to my old favourite, Ashtead common, instead. Here, of course, it was muddy underfoot and I was inadequately shod - and nothing in the way of butterflies was to be seen. However, there were several bee flies - the improbable Bombylius - hovering and darting about like something out of Hieronymus Bosch's imagination. And, best of all, beside a woodland path I came across a fine Snakeshead Fritillary, with two flowers - one open, one still hooded - right next to a patch of beautiful white Wood Anenomes. Needless to say, I did not have my camera with me to catch this perfect arrangement - it was that kind of day... There's a foreword to all this: on my way to the station - before any of this had happened and while I had yet to learn that my original mission was doomed - I heard an unusually melodious song coming from an elder tree as I was passing, paused to have a look, and got a fine close-up view of a Willow Warbler. Beak open, it was giving a textbook example of its distinctive, rather sad song, which builds to a rising, questioning climax, then dies away. I have never seen a Willow Warbler so close to home before. If I was a vicar, I could make a sermon from that afternoon's events, so pregnant with moral lessons are they - however, happily, I am not.