In the final paragraph of
On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin wrote:
Quote:
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It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
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It is widely believed that the “tangled bank” he had in mind is about half a mile away from his home at Down House and is now the Kent Wildlife Trust’s Downe Bank nature reserve. So last Saturday, Tom and I thought we’d pay it a visit. The KWT web site gives a postcode so I pumped it into the SatNav and off we went.
It turns out that this postcode takes you to a point on a narrow single-track road between Cudham and Downe, on which there is no parking and no signs for Downe Bank either. So we parked at Down House and asked if they knew where Downe Bank was. “Over there somewhere” they said, waving vaguely in the direction of Cudham. So we set off across the fields and through some woods until we reached the road we’d driven up. Still no signs for the reserve but on our right was a beautiful sloping wildflower meadow, with a footpath along the top, that looked perfect for the part. So in we went.
It was certainly “clothed with many plants of many kinds” and wasn’t badly off for insects either...
Musk mallow
Field bindweed
Wild carrot
Small scabious
Lords-and-ladies fruiting by the roadside at the edge of the meadow.
There was lots of birdsfoot trefoil, daisies, dandelions, clovers and several thistles too, plus these that I have not yet been able to ID...
1. A very small flower, only about 10mm or so across.
2. This looks like a honeysuckle to me, or possibly a madder, but I can't get any closer than that. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
On the insect front there were honeybees, bumble-bees and hoverflies and quite a collection of butterflies...
Common blue feeding on the birdsfoot trefoil
Small copper
There were also lots of whites and either gatekeeper or meadow brown (possibly both) but I have trouble seperating those and couldn't get a photo.
The grass moths were unusual in that they were settling head-up instead of head-down...
There were soldier beetles on the honeysuckle lookalike...
...and a sawfly (species unknown but I suspect
Tenthredo of some kind) on the carrot flowers...
All told it was a wonderful afternoon with just one small problem - this wasn't Downe Bank!
We were in the field just below Twenty Acre Shaw, Downe Bank is on the other side of the Cudham Road!
Three guesses where I'm going this coming weekend!
Dave P.
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