Country diary: Sometimes only the most rotten fruit will do
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Version 0 of 1. Buxton, Derbyshire: Our discovery apples have mainly gone to the jackdaws and crows. But here come a dozen red admirals, and they know what they like The floss from willowherb seed flared as it passed through strips of sunlight between our fruit trees. But a secondary, far stranger source of glitter came from below. Every few minutes, among the intervening grasses, newly hatched craneflies bulbed out the earth, their unfurled wings sparkling as they dried and waited to launch. Above were the sounds of ravens on display, the birds barrelling down and then flipping on to their backs as they flew momentarily upside down. All these heterogenous details converged in a single announcement. It’s autumn! Yet it was our discovery apples that best summarised the season. This year’s crop is a rich rose colour and has been beckoning to the local birds for weeks. While we’ve harvested a third, most has gone to jackdaws and crows, along with the blackbirds and tits. I’ve seen the corvids flying off with whole hunks of flesh, but the small birds quarry out pits in the skins of the hanging fruit. The rest of the excavation work is performed by mould or the jaws of wasps, and while some apples remain on the tree looking like beautiful rose blobs among the foliage, many have fallen and gathered below. The air around is sweet if vinegar-edged, and the nest of rotted fruit is studded with wasps and flies. It has also lured in a dozen red admirals that circle above in dazzling hoops of hot-iron red. They may look exquisite, but they are drawn to the rottenest apples whose contused skins are wrinkled with white mould. The butterflies putter about on six outward-pointing tarsi with the proboscis unfurled and kinked downwards through its last two-thirds. It tap-taps the surface until it locates a pit to the interior, then works forward until it stands full square over its own mouth-parts. The proboscis is bent back under the abdomen and the beast angles the tube deeper into soft flesh. Down it probes until it can suck on those overripe juices and, I swear, as it stands there drawing on all that fermented sweetness, the gorgeous wings batting back and forth, winking in the light, you can sense the aura of absolute contentment. 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 |