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The orange swift caterpillar feeds inside the roots of plants such as bracken and docks. In July it spins a cocoon of silk and root fragments in one of the cavaties it has eaten out.
It is difficult to picture it now, but in 1992 when I made a visit to what was then Skelton Grange opencast coal mine, just north of the river, this was a post industrial landscape of almost 100 hectares of spoil heaps and old coal workings interspersed with about the same amount of farmland. At the time of my visit a new river channel had been cut ready for a diversion of the Aire.
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AT REST on the window frame, a male Orange Swift moth looks like a fragment of twig, or, with apologies to this attractive creature, like the shrivelled fliter-tip of a cigarette. When a restless fly bumps into it, it drops to the window-sill, landing with a slight thud, and plays dead.
Our first journey on the new M1/A1 link-road, south east of Leeds. It crosses what now looks as if it has always been agricultural land. But at least one part of the route along the Aire Valley was until recently mainly industrial dereliction.
It has been mild and drizzly for much of the day. Very English weather; temperate, the air feels soft. This probably means that it is a good night for slugs to venture out, which is good news for the Hedgehogs which feed on them. Our car headlights pick one out on a garden lawn. It trots off briskly towards the hedge.