"And we shall be changed"

NOT ONLY do governments change, but other familiar names are becoming confusingly discarded by taxonomists.

Visiting our compost heap, I was reminded that "time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana." Last month the hazard of banana skins was apparent among politicians. Now the fruit fly known by generations of biologists and geneticists as Drosophilia melanogaster is no more. Re-classified out of its genus, it will henceforth be known as Sophophora. In the compost heap they still breed like flies.

Birds fare no better. It is disconcerting to find that having enjoyed the frantic flight of the fantailed warbler in several European countries, I have really been watching what is now the Zitting cisticola.

It is a relief that when asked, ‘Grandad, what's that white butterfly with orange wing tips?’ I can still confidently reply, ‘That is an Orange Tip.’ Thank God.

However, to watch the metamorphosis of a butterfly or moth from a dull grey or brown shroud-like chrysalis is one of the great privileges of a June day. Last month I unearthed two different pupae. From one has emerged a Lime Hawkmoth; the other, almost 5cm long, gives an occasional shrug and I suspect it will develop into a glorious creature bearing no resemblance to what I now behold.

‘I will magnify the Lord’ is a good principle and I also magnify many of His creations, with a x10 pocket lens. Thus I discovered a shining, living jewel on the garden bench. Metallic green and blue with thin red lines, it was one of the tortoise beetles which hides its head and legs under its shining carapace and feeds on wild thyme. (Oh yes, we had a wild thyme in the rockery last Saturday). The Lime hawkmoth adult eats nothing, but its larvae feed on the leaves of lime trees. There are now no lime trees in The Limes. Coincidence?

As Ted Hughes wrote, ‘Swifts are back, which means the globe's still turning’, and the day that three flew over the church, half a dozen skylarks sang upwards as they fluttered high above Imberhorne farm. And it was Ascension Day.

Peter Bateman