October 2025 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren

Hornet Hoverfly

This bounteous autumn peaked in early September with branches laden with hips, haws, acorns and sloes. I doubt I have ever seen such clustered masses of cherry-red haws, bending the boughs under their weight. We have had just the right combination of sunshine and, latterly, rain, to produce an exceptional harvest. Such abundance seems wasteful, but the more seeds there are, the better the chances of some of them escaping the hungry jaws of wildlife and generating new plants. As it is, squirrels, deer, jays, badgers and mice can stuff themselves this year. By the by, don’t let your dog eat acorns. When raw they are full of tannins and are mildly toxic. Blanched, to get rid of the tannins, they become edible and can be ground to make oaken bread, coffee, even pastries.

The rain, which began soon after the August Bank Holiday, should produce a good crop of mushrooms this year. I noticed a few field mushrooms in the short grass near Littlecote, as well as fairy rings of beige-brown champignons. Chicken-of-the-woods, a yellow-brown tiered bracket of oak stumps is quite frequent this year. You will, I’m sure, have seen a lot of ladybirds this year. Most of them are the native Seven-spot variety, not the non-native Harlequin. Their main prey is aphids, which are unusually abundant this year. On the other hand, I haven’t noticed exceptional numbers of hoverflies and bees, although among the former I’ve noted the mighty Hornet Hoverfly, a hornet mimic and one of our largest true flies.

The downs were parched and almost flower-free by late summer, apart from a few hawkbits and scabious, but the wetlands near the river were still colourful, with water mint, fleabane, forget-me-not, and watercress. There, and on garden flowers, was a late hatching of white butterflies – Large and Small White, and (especially) Green-veined White. If you see fresh Peacock butterflies in September, they may be from a second generation, a new phenomenon in a normally single-brooded species, and one we can probably put down to the steadily warming climate.