Our Living Churchyard in October

What image does the word ‘harvest’ bring to mind? Is it one of large combine harvesters, each costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, proceeding at stately pace in late summer through fields of wheat and barley? Each attended by expensive tractors and trailers taking away the grain, and followed by more expensive machines to bale and cart the straw? Or do you think of a natural harvest, whereby living creatures do not sow or reap or store in barns, but live off a natural harvest that grows in the wild all year round? Autumn is also a time of spiders’ webs, strung from grass stem to grass stem, glistening in the morning dew, woven overnight, set up to catch flies and other insects that the spider finds delectable.

A visit to our churchyard this week showed several jackdaws busy feeding in the grass. Of course, they were too far away to see exactly what they were picking up, but jackdaws live on a catholic diet, including both seeds and insects, and there is now a plentiful supply of all these here. A patch of black feathers suggests that a jackdaw has itself made a tasty meal for another bird – perhaps a sparrowhawk. Further on, another patch of feathers suggests that a woodpigeon has met the same fate. Should we be concerned about this? The birds they are able to catch are mainly the injured, old and sick. Many insects at this time of year will have already laid their eggs which will be lower down in the grass, and so out of sight of the jackdaws. In this way a natural balance will be reached, and each species has its own way of ensuring that the next generation can thrive and prosper.

There are three different butterfly species which I presume breed in our meadow: each overwinters as a larva (caterpillar), but each has its own strategy for ensuring that the next generation survives the winter to breed again next summer. The Small Copper will rest on the underside of a leaf and may indeed emerge to feed when the weather is warm enough. The Common Blue hibernates either low down on its foodplant - usually Bird’s-foot-trefoil – or within a piece of moss or leaf litter, changing its colour from green to olive so as better to conceal itself. The Small Skipper lays its eggs within a sheath of the grass stem of Yorkshire Fog: the caterpillars hibernate within this sheath and emerge the following April to complete their life cycle.

Next time you gather to sing ‘All things bright and beautiful’, will this bring to mind images of beetles, grasshoppers, spiders and olivecoloured caterpillars? I urge you to open your minds, and reflect that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder…