4th July 2026 / Temp: 28 C / Water Level: Low

Walking across the river meadows, the grass tussocks thick and the seed heads long on midsummer mornings always calls forth an emotion not experienced since childhood when stamping into shallow puddles for the sheer pleasure of splashing water in almost knee height sprays. So it is in old river meadows filled with grasshoppers – just a footstep landing however careful, however gentle sends at least six insects hopping in gigantic leaps in every direction to avoid being crushed and e e cummins poem always comes to mind…

which, posssibly, may very roughly translate as

Grasshopper who, as we look up, now gathering in to the leap: arriving. Grasshopper to rearrangingly, become grasshopper;

Which describing looking up and spotting a grasshopper on a flower and watching it leap off while the scattering of the words on the page create the brief flash of scattering insects – what a wonderful poet he is!

In a more prosaic aside, we often wondered why in some parts of the meadow there appeared to be no grasshoppers at all while another half a mile the whole meadow was alive with hopping insects. We found the answer in a note in Naturespot :

Egg survival: Females (grasshoppers) lay egg pods just beneath the soil surface. Soil that is compacted by heavy livestock trampling ……… destroys the overwintering eggs.

This little fellow in his wild leap must have clung to my boot socks or trousers because he was carried back home, quite unbeknown to me, and leapt off to hide in the downstairs loo! He remained there all night and was only rescued the following morning by my daughter who carefully carried him out of the house onto the lawn which fortunately due to the heat waves hadn’t been mowed all summer so the grass was thick and long. Maybe he survived, who can tell.