Country diary: A fly is never just a fly
All spider webs inspected thus far have contained their remains, but a larger revelation came from some cattle troughs 10 miles from here. The surface film was full of drowned insects. The fly of St Mark is so often a corpse that you could easily imagine that its species' raison d'être was to exit life as casually as possible. Those many victims, however, hint only at the creature's astonishing abundance. For the ensuing weeks it will be probably the most numerous macro-organism in our countryside.
It is not just omnipresent in its own black-flecked shape. It's also there in transmuted form in our first swarm of swifts. It occurred to me that the swifts' entire return to temperate Europe may be timed to coincide with this fly's emergence. The starling chicks I hear wheezing in our eaves are presumably fuelling their infant squall with the blood and body of St Mark. Everything that eats flesh, you imagine, is present at the same life-enhancing feast: swifts, hobbies, gulls, starlings, bats, wasps.
St Mark's flies speak of the unitary condition of nature. They need soil and vegetation in which to grow, but sky in which to breed. They are made of earth but, in turn, they are consumed and converted into heaven-dwelling birds. Life in Britain is one continuous holy cloth, or perhaps – given that we are among the most nature-depleted countries – holey cloth.
Yet our government, surely among the most deliberately anti-nature since the second world war with its new planning regulations, has just inverted this understanding of the living world. It has reduced the outdoor realm to a between-the-ears process, where it has been chopped into little parcels and all parts have been made equal. So a 500-year-old yew or oak can be judged the same, or compensated for, with 500 plastic-wrapped saplings. It has reduced life to the idea of a machine to meet a numerical sense of national wellbeing, invariably expressed as 'economic growth'.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Country diary: An eel that's as fluid as the river itself
Behind the pannier market in Tavistock, one can take a break from shopping and peer over the riverside wall to view the River Tavy. The rain-fed flow that rises on Dartmoor is as unpredictable as the weather and prone to seasonal mood swings. After heavy downpours the river will race by in a rage. But this dry summer has left it lean and listless today, in little hurry to reach the sea, dawdling through rocky gullies and unwinding in languid glides. Low water and bright sunlight mean that trout are clearly visible in a shallow pool. Beneath them I notice what at first resembles a half-metre section of discarded cable – until it moves, snaking over the stony riverbed in front of me: an eel. Just an eel, some might shrug. And at one time they were so plentiful they were taken for granted. No longer. Overfishing, disease and dams that impede migration have caused European eel numbers to plummet over recent decades, to such an extent that the species is now classified as 'critically endangered' – a higher level of extinction threat than that of the tiger and giant panda. The dark brown individual I am watching twists and probes snout-first into nooks and crannies in its sinuous search for food. As fluid as the river it inhabits, it appears and disappears amid the eddies, like a flexing length of muddy water: part solid, part liquid. There is something prehistoric and unfathomable about these long-lived bottom dwellers. Slippery with secrets, much of their lives remains shrouded in mystery. While Atlantic salmon famously battle upstream to breed, mature eels head in the opposite direction, meandering downriver and navigating the Atlantic to spawn somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. The Gulf Stream currents transport the drifting offspring to our shores where they seek out fresh water, growing over years in rivers, lakes and canals. For now, this Tavy eel looks content to bide its time. But some day, a wanderlust will stir – an urge to return to the distant place of its birth to breed. From a small pool behind a town launderette, the vast ocean beckons for one of nature's great travellers. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- The Guardian
Country diary: A fly is never just a fly
Examine any part of the horizon from our garden and you find the air freckled with slow-dreaming swarms of black dots. I'd hazard a guess that all of them are Bibio marci, a fly named because it's said to emerge on the feast of Saint Mark – 25 April. All spider webs inspected thus far have contained their remains, but a larger revelation came from some cattle troughs 10 miles from here. The surface film was full of drowned insects. The fly of St Mark is so often a corpse that you could easily imagine that its species' raison d'être was to exit life as casually as possible. Those many victims, however, hint only at the creature's astonishing abundance. For the ensuing weeks it will be probably the most numerous macro-organism in our countryside. It is not just omnipresent in its own black-flecked shape. It's also there in transmuted form in our first swarm of swifts. It occurred to me that the swifts' entire return to temperate Europe may be timed to coincide with this fly's emergence. The starling chicks I hear wheezing in our eaves are presumably fuelling their infant squall with the blood and body of St Mark. Everything that eats flesh, you imagine, is present at the same life-enhancing feast: swifts, hobbies, gulls, starlings, bats, wasps. St Mark's flies speak of the unitary condition of nature. They need soil and vegetation in which to grow, but sky in which to breed. They are made of earth but, in turn, they are consumed and converted into heaven-dwelling birds. Life in Britain is one continuous holy cloth, or perhaps – given that we are among the most nature-depleted countries – holey cloth. Yet our government, surely among the most deliberately anti-nature since the second world war with its new planning regulations, has just inverted this understanding of the living world. It has reduced the outdoor realm to a between-the-ears process, where it has been chopped into little parcels and all parts have been made equal. So a 500-year-old yew or oak can be judged the same, or compensated for, with 500 plastic-wrapped saplings. It has reduced life to the idea of a machine to meet a numerical sense of national wellbeing, invariably expressed as 'economic growth'. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
05-05-2025
- The Guardian
A good year for apple blossom
The alarm call of a blackbird makes me look up in time to see a magpie hurtle into the branches of the apple tree in our garden, hotly pursued by two adult blackbirds in no mood to compromise. They shriek and display their displeasure until, after a minute or so, it gives up and flaps away over the hedge towards the fields. The blackbirds have many scores to settle with the much larger predator, most recently the attack on their nest where a magpie made off with at least one egg – which I found empty shortly afterwards on the path, eaten rather than hatched. In the collision with the tree, the magpie causes a flurry of falling blossom, a pale starburst of petals against the darker foliage, but most of the recently emerged flowers are still firmly rooted to the boughs. It is a good year for blossom – very welcome after last spring when Storm Kathleen ripped the flowers away before pollination had taken place, leaving us with our poorest apple crop for many years. I look with fresh eyes at the apple tree. Now grown to three times my height, it bears little resemblance to the bare-rooted stem I brought home about 30 years ago. I'd found it languishing in a high street store that has long since vanished, and bought it on a whim for a penny under two pounds. Planted to fill a gap at the edge of the garden, it largely had to fend for itself – except when an early storm knocked it out of kilter and I propped it to avoid collapse. It leans outwards to this day, but has grown into a fine, strong tree and is usually a good cropper. Bumblebees, mostly common carders yellow with pollen, fossick around the blossoms in the warmth of the sun, and hopefully this will translate into a good harvest for both eating and cider making. Later, in the twilight with a gentle breeze beginning to stir the leaves, the flowers shed a drizzle of petals – while the male blackbird, having recovered its composure, delivers an evening song from a high branch. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
