Poppy

Papaver rhoeas growing in a wheat crop, Bishop Wilton, East Yorkshire

A flying visit to Yorkshire to pick up Wifie's mother who will be spending a couple of weeks with us in Cumbria. I set the alarm for 5 am, but today I failed to get up, I was too tired. I managed to get going at 7 am by which time the sun was shining strongly.

I walked down Braygate, past the Far Grasses to the Bishop Wilton Poorlands. This solitary poppy was growing in a wheat field off Braygate, brightly illuminated against the green of the crop. The verges along the road are broad and reasonably rich in flowers and there are good numbers of farmland birds such as yellowhammers, skylarks, linnets, tree sparrows and whitethroats. But what I noticed today after the last couple of weeks of taking bumblebee photos in the garden, was that until I reached the Poorlands, I saw only one or two bumblebees in a mile of walking. I have more bumblebees at any one time visiting just one small clump of chives in our Arnside garden.

This anecdotal observation echoes the situation in the countryside at large where bumblebee populations are in sharp decline. Bishop Wilton lies on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, and there is a mixed agriculture of arable and pasture, with the balance tipped to arable crops. There is much rape amongst the wheat and other grass crops. These crops are sprayed heavily with insecticides, and the spraying of the rape in particular which bees will be visiting for pollen probably accounts for the devastated bumbleebee population locally. In the village, around the gardens, bumblebees are still numerous. This and the abundance of bees at home in Arnside emphasises the importance of our garden landscape for bumblebees and other insects when the countryside around has become hostile to them.

The Poorlands by contrast are three fields originally managed for the benefit of landless villagers, providing hay crops that enabled villagers to feed a cow or a sheep through the winter. They are protected now by designation as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and managed as hay meadows without fertiliser or chemical treatments. They are rich in flowers that have been lost from the countryside around, and here today there were numerous bumblebees and common blue butterflies. My father-in-law, who farmed in the village, first brought me to see these fields, he had vernacular names for the flowers, and he knew the story of the Poorlands. He had a rare appreciation of the flowers, butterflies and birds, and in his farming lifetime had witnessed the transformation of the countryside and observed the decline of breeding birds like the curlews and lapwings. When he died a few years ago, Wifie and I came to the Poorlands to collect wildflowers to help decorate the church.

There are two pictures of the Poorlands posted on Flickr

Thank you for all the comments, stars and hearts for yesterday's blip of the morning heron. Having been out of blip range for 24 hours since posting that entry, I am way behind with my comments. I will try to catch up over the next 24 hours.