Humming Bird Hawk Moth at Sizergh Castle Gardens

Bright cumulous cloud over Scout Scar, 19th July

The child  is the youngest person on Scout Scar today. 'Two weeks and a bit ', his father tells me. 'I wonder how many times he'll come here.'
I have lost count of the times I've walked here this millennium. 
​To avoid the 23 degrees forecast for mid-afternoon I set out at 7.00am. 'Sunny with light winds'. A blue sky patterned with cumulous cloud is refreshing after days of heat-wave haze.
The herbaceous border is bright with summer flowers and I have the castle terrace to myself, me and the bees and butterflies. Imagine living  here and being out in the gardens in the solitude of early morning.  Green vine-leaves festoon the south-facing brick wall and pears on cordons are ripening.  Pollinators  seek nectar amongst flowers and I spy the whirring flight of a Humming-bird-hawk-moth hovering by verbena flowers to sip nectar with its long proboscis, never settling.  One , maybe more.
I shall return next day, to seek this enchanting moth.  And to breakfast on summer berry flapjack at the Sizergh cafe.

Next day's forecast is 24 degrees, sunny with light winds.  But at 7.00am it's already hot without a breath of air.  Scout Scar escarpment  catches any breeze, but there's none.  I walk briskly, an interlude in the castle garden then home before the mid-afternoon heat. 
Wings and shadow wings flicker across the terrace wall and through the flowers.  Tall verbena flowers with a backdrop of vines with long green tendrils. A blue damsel on a vine leaf,  a small skipper on verbena.  Meandering  to and fro along the terrace perhaps I glimpse Humming bird hawk moth.  Moments of seeming stillness amongst  bright nasturtiums and dahlias, then a wild dance of winged creatures and a vanishing maybe moth.    Painted ladies linger,  translucent with bright upper-wings and beautiful eye-spots on the underwings. The hot sun is on my back but I stay with the butterflies a long while, knowing there's welcome shade in the terrace gazebo. 
House martins are calling and flying  into their nests in window niches in the castle tower.  In a reprise of last summer I delight in the wildlife here-  a natural history.  And like the history of the castle there is much that is elusive. 

I walk through rank vegetation beside the lake en route for Holeslack, hoping for a reprise of the Humming bird hawk moths I'd found there yesterday.   The fringe of woodland gives a moment of respite, a welcome shade.  Up on Scout Scar at noon it's exposed, in searing sun.  Where are the light winds the forecast promised? There's no-one else walking along the escarpment and in this heat it feels reckless.  I've water to drink but the heat is enervating. A few moments of cloud cover and a faint breath of air is restorative, but with the next blast of heat comes  a sense of being overwhelmed.
Two days with a similar weather forecast, but the experience was so different.  It's an equivocal summer,  something lovely, something unbearable.  
My painted ladies look cool, look hot.  In sunlight and shadows there are mysteries hidden in foliage and in the terrace wall. Both lakes are green with a thick covering of aquatic vegetation and I wonder how their wildlife fares.
 July 2026   in context
 26 July. Wildfires in France and Spain dominate the news. In 'The Battle of Bordeaux'  firemen seek to protect the city. Spain has declared a national emergency. Winter rains encouraged the growth of vegetation, followed by dry weather which creates  fuel for wildfires. June 2026 is the second hottest recorded in France, the hottest in Spain. With temperatures set to rise to 40 degrees in the latest heat-wave.
Fire clouds, pyrocumulonimbus,  are a phenomenon created when severe wildfires generate their own weather systems,  including fire-generated thunder storms.
There are wildfires in the Cairngorms, in the moors of Greater Manchester, and in Wales.