Exmoor Lockdown Diary 1 - Flight of the Bumblebees
And so the world closes down for a while. At least, that is how it feels to the millions of individuals hearing constant bad news bulletins about the coronavirus. We’re all in it together, and yet we are all in it alone.
That is what I was thinking as I peered out of the window at the grey hills of eastern Exmoor just now. No sound of jet-engines passing overhead. Not really any noise caused by mankind at all. Just birdsong and the sound of the west wind passing through the beech-hedges way up on the ridge.
Soothing, yet scary. Peaceful, yet potentially permanent.
It can only be a matter of time before the British government declares a much more comprehensive lockdown, similar to the one they have in place in Italy. And when they do, this state of semi-isolation we’ve been coming to terms with will click up a few gears and we will know the real meaning of the word seclusion.
Which is why I decided to write the Exmoor Lockdown Diary. Because, while it might be all doom and gloom out there, we must cling to the positives we stumble across as and when we find them.
And of course, in the spring countryside there is a lot to enjoy and appreciate.
Two days ago the sun came out for the first time in weeks and it had a real strength to it… I love that - when you feel the warmth of the sun on your face for the first time after a long winter.
The warmth of the afternoon was unexpected, and the entire valley seemed to be a-buzz somehow with the excitement of the coming spring. The world was literally buzzing. Bumblebees have been in trouble for some time now - within the last 70 years two of the UK’s 24 bumblebee species have become nationally extinct and a further six are now in danger. Numbers of all species have been dropping at alarming rates.
But you wouldn’t have believed that, had you walked with me up the valley on that warm day. There were bumblebees everywhere. In the wild field opposite our house you could see them dodging between the gorse flowers, disappearing down small holes and buzzing over fences to reach the spring flowers beyond.
But it was further up the valley that I really had to stop and state.A pussy-willow tree was coming out into full flower and so many bumblebees were dive-bombing its branches I could hear their collective drone 100 metres down the path. I thought perhaps someone’s beehive had gone rogue and escaped.
But no, there must have been several hundred bumblebees after the pollen of that one tree.
It was heartening to see. The mad aerial dance of the bees took my mind well away from the horrors of pandemics - and then, on the way home, I picked a bunch of wild garlic.
More about that discovery in the next Exmoor Lockdown Diary.
Wild garlic
