Summer - the flash of a kingfisher...
If spring is the season that never settles, then a Suffolk summer marches to a slower beat. With the coastal beaches busy with visitors it’s often better to leave the car behind and revel in a landscape of quiet footpaths and country lanes, past tranquil churchyards and fields of ripening corn and barley.
But while there’s good reason to stop and linger, the apparent relaxation in nature’s pace can be deceptive. The ancient oaks may have reached their leafy perfection and birds are quieter now with young almost ready to fledge, but coppiced areas brim with wood anemone and woodruff, with patches of wild garlic and the teeming insect world at its busiest. 
The sandy heaths of the Brecks and Sandlings provide a perfect haven for rare silver-studded blue butterflies, exotic tiger beetles and, as the heather begins to flower in a shimmering purple haze of late summer, the contented buzz of innumerable insects. And occasionally, in the far western corner of the Brecks, at Lakenheath Fen, Golden Orioles nest.
At Knettishall Country Park see common lizards basking in the sun, whilst flowering dropwort carpets the heath in a froth of white. Across the county badgers abound; look out for their numerous sets. Any quiet corner or brambly thicket provides a welcome home to butterflies and other colourful insects. It’s a miniature world not just confined to land; wherever you find fresh water, you’ll see dragonflies and damselflies. A wander along the River Lark may reward you with a flash of blue as a kingfisher flies past!
As the day draws to end so little owls perch on fence posts, and as the sun sinks, so in the Sandlings at Blaxhall Common, Sutton Common and Hollesley Heath, the strange churring of the nightjar begins.
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