Nature Notes: Indian summer is a treat for wildlife

To be fair, it was actually my dogs that found it on the edge of a stubble field; they picked up the scent and scampered over to investigate.

Roe deer bucks shed their antlers in September or October when their testosterone levels fall following the rutting season, which takes place during the summer. On quite a few occasions, I’ve seen a very handsome buck with a fine pair of antlers in the vicinity of the spot where I picked it up, sometimes in the company of a doe. Unlike other types of deer, which live in herds, roe deer lead solitary lives or form small family groups.

Bucks start growing new antlers in November and this process takes approximately four months. The antlers’ size is generally determined by age, although the animal’s condition and the availability of food can be factors. Therefore, it’s possible for a mature buck to produce a good set of antlers one year and a smaller set the next. The length of the antler I found and the pearling (knobbly bumps) on it suggests it comes from a fairly mature buck. My four-year-old daughter was delighted to be able to take it into school to show her classmates.

Just a couple of weeks earlier we’d been lucky enough to spot a doe and fawn on one of our evening walks in the same area. So many times over the summer months, I’d spotted the doe on her own and guessed that she had a fawn tucked away somewhere in the dense undergrowth. For the first three months, does hide their young in long grass or bracken when they go off to feed, returning regularly to allow them to suckle.

Already more than half the size of its mother and very agile, it was a real treat to finally see the fawn out in the open. The coming months will be a real test for both doe and fawn as mortality rates are high among young deer during their first winter.

After reading about a serious decline in the number of Small Tortoiseshell butterflies this year, I was surprised by a sudden influx to our garden during the balmy days we experienced in September. We’ve deliberately planted lots of butterfly-friendly plants and they’ve attracted a wide variety of species. However, the Small Tortoiseshell was conspicuous by its absence until the final throes of what turned out to be an Indian summer.

We also spotted a striking orange Comma in our garden for the first time. At one point, the Comma’s numbers had declined so dramatically that it was confined to a handful of Welsh border counties, but, since the 1960s, it’s one of the few species to have bucked the trend by expanding its range.

The good weather not only made bringing in the harvest easier for farmers but resulted in an abundance of fruit. The blackberries, or brambles, we picked on our walks were some of the largest and sweetest we’ve ever had. For the best part of a month, we enjoyed munching them straight from the hedgerow as well as picking plenty to make crumbles, jam and pop in the freezer for use during the winter months.

The declining hedgehog population is well-documented so, with this in mind, we recently spent an afternoon making two hedgehog houses to put in our garden. A little research online suggested that the key components are a large, secure hibernation chamber with a narrow entrance that larger predators won’t be able to access.

We appropriated a couple of old wooden wine boxes, a broken terracotta pot and some old roof tiles, stuffing them with straw and fallen leaves, proving that you don’t need to spend a fortune on a purpose-built one. We’re hoping that the hedgehog that visited us at dusk during the summer may bed down in one for the winter.