Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

How wonderful not having to pay. Mrs Bumblebee is doing the shopping too. She not only fuels her tiny motor, which I can hear buzzing happily away into the sky, but she has collected small parcels of pollen which the 'garage' gave her as a present for buying fuel.

She is going to make a cake of pollen and honey and store it in a pot down in her underground house, which is built of moss inside a mouse-hole.

She may have to eat some of this cake if she cannot get out when the weather turns cold and wet. Otherwise, she can feed it to her young bees. Mr Orange-tip Butterfly doesn't bother with the pollen. He just wants the hydrocarbons. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, refined into easily digested molecules '“ not so grand as the big petrol molecules we burn up in our cars.

He is driving around the meadows and woods looking for a wife. This is a tiring business because he may have to travel for seven hours each day all over the place. Then he may have to chase other males away if they come into his neighbourhood.

At last, he sees a female. She does not have gaudy orange flashes on her wings, only black ones. She will have to be chased all over the place, too, and she will have to fill up at the petal station to run her little motor as well.

Then she won't bother with cowslips any more but will look for cuckoo flowers, where she will lay her eggs on the leaves and tank up on a slightly different fuel at the same time.

Thank goodness the cowslips are coming back again. Farmers, gardeners and open spaces wardens are planting the seed in meadows and lawns.

They just collect the seed in June or July and scatter this on to bare patches on their grassland. This year I saw thousands of cowslips on Hunters' Race meadows just north of Chichester.

Another good place was Caesar's Camp on the North Downs overlooking Folkestone, and places all along the South Downs, too, such as Castle Hill, near Lewes.

We need all these insects to pollinate some of our farm crops, so it is best to keep as many petal stations open as possible.