May in the Valley

What you can expect to see...

This is an extremely busy month for wildlife and if you spent all your free time outdoors you would still not manage to see everything that’s happening. May is a magical month and will pass too quickly, so make the most of it!

Spring has been a few weeks late this year due to a long cold winter (well colder than we have experenced in recent years). The woodland spring flowers are certainly later this year and the Bluebells which are normally in full flower by the beginning of May will not reach their peak until the second or even the third week of the month. Rowhill Nature Reserve is one of the Valley sites where you can enjoy the spectacle. Also watch out for Dog Violets, growing singly or in vast purple drifts.

You’ll see wild flowers everywhere. You can’t help but notice the frothy white umbels of Cow Parsley lining the road verges and pathways and the mass of Hawthorn blossom brightening up the hedgerows. May and June are the month to watch out for orchids, these exquisite yet elusive plants come into flower over the next few weeks attracting all sorts of insects. Pyramidal, Bee, Common Spotted and Green Winged are just some of the many orchids found in the Valley.

This is a particularly busy month for insects – beetles, flies, bugs – all making the most of the pollen and nectar brought about by the floral explosion in the hedgerows. It’s also the time to start looking for both Dragonflies and Damselflies. One of the earliest to appear in the Valley each year is the colourful Hairy Dragonfly often found in the reed edges of ponds and lakes and around the lake fringes. Watch out also for the Downy Emerald, the only green dragonfly to be flying this early in the season.  It’s found throughout the Valley often where banks are covered by trees, but it is very active and rarely stops all day teasing you with flashes of its metallic green.

Woodland edges, rides and glades as well as many areas of the Blackwater Valley Path act as sun traps and are good places to spot many of the butterflies that are flying now. Look for Brimstones, Small Coppers (our Butterfly of the Month), Peacocks, Small Tortoiseshells, Commas and Orange Tips. This first flying batch of the season will have spent the winter as either adults or chrysalises.

The last summer migrants will be arriving this month including the Swallows, Swifts, Reed Warblers and Martins. Watch out for them over the lakes feeding on the insects. The most noticeable are the Swifts with their screaming aerobatic flights. The last to arrive they are also the first to leave in August.

By the end of May the first youngsters will be proclaiming the arrival of summer. Ducks and geese that stayed are among the first to breed and their young are easily watched on the river and lakes. The Canada Geese form ‘crèches’, where a number of broods gather together for protection. Crèches of 20 or more are not uncommon.

THINGS TO DO... 

• For details and  ideas of what to do this month  look at our calendar of May events   >>>          

   Butterfly of the Month
   Small Copper   >>>

   Bird of the Month
   Great Crested Grebe  >>>

   May sightings  >>>

   May events >>>  

  Did you know...?

Have you ever wondered
why certain plant species bear the name dog – Dog Violet, Dog Rose and Dog’s Mercury are all examples? 

Well if you go back in history, you will find that country folk used the description ‘dog’ as a derogatory terms for wild flowers and plants that were inferior to some of their relatives and therefore
only ‘fit for dogs’.
 

Dog Violet, for example, was scentless compared to the earlier flowering and scented Sweet Violet.

Dog’s Mercury is the useless relative of Annual Mercury, which was used in folk medicine (although both are dangerous).

Dogwood is a shrub which bears berries that are not fit to eat.

Exactly why the rose of the English hedgerow, which was adopted as his emblem by Henry VII and became the Tudor Rose and a symbol of the British monarchy, came to be known as a Dog Rose is a bit of a mystery.
 

One theory goes back to the ancient Greeks who called the wild rose ‘Dog Rose’ because they believed that the roots could cure a man bitten by a mad dog.
 

The Romans then adopted the name Rosa canina, which was then translated directly into English as Dog Rose.