July is staggering to a close: exhausted, feverish and desperate for a drink. It’s been one of the hottest on record, and still no sign of rain. Townsfolk have become crepuscular: walking the dog before dawn and venturing out only after sundown.
It’s been a terrible year for plants and trees – everyone battling to keep gardens watered and alive. But it’s been an extraordinary year for Wellington wildlife: we’ve had ospreys, beavers – and now glowworms?
Could it be the more wildlife-friendly approach adopted by the council’s open spaces team? Is it down to the biodiversity-boosting efforts of Transition Town Wellington’s volunteer gardeners? Or is it that so many species (including our own) are on the move – disoriented and displaced by shifting seasons and extreme weather and scrambling to adapt?
It’s a 10-minute walk from my house to Longforth Farm, a new estate of about 500 cookie-cutter houses. More than a decade ago, the developers created two attenuation ponds between the edge of the estate and the railway line, and it is here that the glowworms have been spotted.
I make my way along mown paths, the tall grasses on either side bleached blond and fluffy with thistledown. Desiccated leaves crunch underfoot. Here and there, young trees are struggling or already dead, crucified to their stakes, limbs silhouetted against the sky. The ponds have shrunk to muddy pools where mallards jostle for space as they bed down for the night. A mini-murmuration of starlings swirls overhead, skywriting joyfully, before plunging into the dark reedbeds in one gulp, like water down a plughole.
I stand, silent, and scan for glowworms: the bioluminescence of the female beetle can flare out as bright as an LED. Nothing yet – or is that … No. Just a pale leaf catching the last hints of light. As my pupils dilate, my attention seems to widen. This is the rods taking over from the cones in the retina as scotopic, or night vision, kicks in. Colours fade and the world shyly reveals itself in peripheral glimpses. Objects glimmer in the gloaming and twinkle in the twilight: it’s all dimness and dazzle here on the edge of town. So, did I find the glowworms? No, dear reader, I did not – but the search flipped a switch in my night-mind and turned on everything else.
