Summer Days

Good weather continues, and the kids are off school, so I have some extra spotters in the garden.  This Yellow Shell Moth was new; not a very yellow example, so I hope I got the ID right.  Still plenty of butterflies coming through - this Gatekeeper was the first I've had in the garden this summer, as was a Common Blue I was too slow to photograph yesterday.  There was also a rather impressive Southern Hawker around this morning, which I hope I will manage to snap sometime - my first large dragonfly.  Finally a new garden pest, Bay Sucker bugs, messing up the leaves on my bay tree - so far the tree doesn't seem too badly affected...

#259 Yellow Shell Moth

#262 Gatekeeper Butterfly

#260 Bay Sucker

250 Species since 1st June

It's been a bit slow lately, due to family and work commitments.  Also the dry weather seems to have kept things somewhat quiet in the garden.  However there's still been plenty to see, especially butterflies and hoverflies.  Here's a few snaps of random visitors to the microEden garden.  The slug appeared after our first rain in weeks, my first non-Asian ladybird, a new generation of beautiful mint moths are all over the lavender, a resting meadow brown butterfly in the bamboo and a variety of hoverflies on the Golden Rod.  I still need to fully get to grips with the bees and hoverflies as there are several present that I didn't yet identify.

#252 Balkan 3-band Slug

#254 14-Spot Ladybird

#69 Mint Moth

#248 Long Hoverfly

#255 Plain-faced Dronefly

#176 Meadow Brown

The Garden is Buzzing

Insects abound, and the list of species found moves towards the 250 mark. 

I liked this tiny, brightly coloured bug: #238 Calocoris stysi.

The caterpillar is not a moth or a butterfly, but from a #217 Large Rose Sawfly.  It and a sibling were still very hungry though, making short work of several rose leaves in a couple of days.

Butterflies are plentiful; the star was a #238 Silver-washed Fritillary, but it was to fast to photograph.  This Comma (#211) on the lavender was more obliging. 

I never really looked too closely at the Daddy Long-legs, but this Tiger Cranefly (#205) is really nicely marked - one of a dozen or so UK species. 

Flies, and especially for some reason the Dull Four-spined Legionnaire (#235), are very partial to drowning themselves in the kids swimming pool.  This is one of several we've rescued.  Eventually the wings dry out and they can fly away.  

Finally a pair of #239 Poecilobothrus nobilitatus flies were getting romantic around the pond, the male jumping around to try to impress its potential mate.

#238 Calocoris stysi

#217 Large Rose Sawfly caterpillar

#211 Comma Butterfly

#205 Tiger Cranefly

#235 Dull Four-spined Legionnaire

#239 Poecilobothrus nobilitatus

Dibden Lane Bird Survey

Sunday morning found me doing a quick bird survey of a field on the edge of the village.  Developers have been all around the village trying to get permission to build on almost every conceivable space.  In this case I was checking what birds were present as the developers commissioned survey took place in November and not surprisingly didn't find much of any interest!  In an hour we found 46 birds of 18 different species in and around the field, including three birds of red conservation status (yellowhammer, house sparrow & skylark).  There were also many butterflies and insects around, including this rather lovely puss moth caterpillar in a mature hedge bordering the proposed site.  Hopefully my input helps at least get a proper discussion of the wildlife value of this plot.

Moth Season

Really I need a moth trap to catch moths at night, but even so there's been new moth species every day, hiding out in the garden somewhere.  Here's three: a rather lovely White Plume Moth, Small Fan-footed Flame hiding away from the Sun on the underside of a leaf and a Small Magpie Moth.  The warm weather seems to suit the moths and butterflies very nicely.

#212 White Plume Moth

#214 Small Fan-footed Wave

#219 Small Magpie Moth

Greystones Farm

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has built a new visitors centre at their Greystones Farm nature reserve near Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, and needed some volunteers with good knowledge on nature to guide groups around the site.  Having been through some training and learned my way around the reserve I started guiding in June.  The reserve is a great place to visit, even without a guide.  It's a site of special scientific importance (SSSI) for the wildflower meadows, which have never been treated with artificial fertilizers & pesticides, and also for a visible history of human habitation from the Neolithic & Iron Age periods on-wards.  In the summer it's covered in flowers and buzzing with insects of all kinds; a great place for a walk and a paddle in the clean Cotswold rivers.  There's a wild-play area for kids, and at the weekends you can even get a cream tea at the cafe.

Three Gloucestershire Orchids

A nice comparison of wild purple-coloured orchids in North Gloucestershire during June. Spotted Orchid from early in the month at Dixton, Pyramidal Orchid photographed near Snowshill and Southern Marsh Orchid in the meadows at Greystones Farm near Bourton.

Spotted Orchid

Pyramidal Orchid

Southern Marsh Orchid

200 Species in a Month

One month into the project I am happy to have achieved 200 species in the garden.  In doing so I have learned a lot about plants and insects that I had never really thought about before, and found some creatures I had no idea were present (or in some cases even existed).  For me personally this is achieving my aim of making me much stronger as a all-round naturalist, which in turn helps me with other activities such as walk-leading and guiding.  Very satisfied.

A Nice Clean Pond

I've got two large terracotta basins that provide permanent water in the garden. Both have rocks, some duckweed, irises and bulrushes, and both had tadpoles.  Otherwise though, the wildlife coming to these ponds has been a little disappointing: only a few hoverflies.  While the baby frogs continue to grow in one basin, they completely disappeared from the other - not sure what happened, whether it was predation (e.g. by blackbirds) or disease.  Anyhow as the water was looking a bit dirty I took the opportunity to change it, and it was gratifying to see an adult frog cooling off in there the very next day.  Hoping for some dragonflies, pond skater, etc. to move in next.

Leaf Miners

I like the crazy patterns leaf miners make in the leaves. The traces are made by larvae, mostly of flies or moths, that live between the top and bottom surfaces of the leaf, eating their way around the interior in different ways until they eventually are ready to transform.  By the plant species involved and the pattern left by the larvae you can mostly identify which the species.  I've recorded mines on sugar snap peas, chard and aquilegia; also on weeds such as sow thistles, herb bennett & willowherb.  Mostly they're fairly harmless, though I'm not so happy about the damage to my chard - not that I can do much about it, if I don't want to use insecticide.

Leaf mine on sugar snap pea

#166 Beet leaf miner on Chard

#121 Aquilegia leaf miner

Summer Walkway at Slimbridge

On the banks of the River Severn, Wildfowl & Wetland Trust at Slimbridge is the best birding site near here. In winter the flocks of wildfowl and waders are huge, but on a beautiful summers day it's pretty good too - lot's of chicks from breeding avocets, lapwings and shelduck, cranes from re-introduction in Somerset Levels out on the meadows and plenty of butterflies too.  Amongst all this you can see the first signs of autumn as returning waders such as ruff, greenshank & green sandpiper start heading South from their breeding grounds in Scandinavia.

Slimbridge Summer Walkway

Poppies

It's been a good year for poppies in the garden. Some years there's none, this year lots of yellow Welsh Poppies materialized in May and now we have rather beautiful Opium Poppies (#175) popping up all over the place.  No idea where the seeds have come from; but they can lay dormant for several years in the soil waiting for the right conditions to germinate.  The current hot spell is obviously such a time.  It's also been great for butterflies, which is good news.

#175 Opium Poppy

Weekend Bug Safari

Spent some time, between World Cup matches, with my youngest son checking for bugs around the garden, and in the process adding several species to the list and learning about some garden inhabitants I'd previously overlooked. Checking the brown wheelie bin for garden waste always yields something after I've been doing some pruning - in this case #154 an oak bush cricket nymph.  Bashing some bushes & trees and catching the falling bugs on a white sheet was fun and also got some results.

#154 Oak Bush Cricket nymph

#161 Crepidodera fulvicornis Flea beetle

#159 Lesser Willow Sawfly larvae

#164 White-lipped Snail

#170 Tachyporus obtusus Rove beetle

#162 Green Orb Weaver Spider

BTO Breeding Bird Survey

I've just done my second visit to my BBS square on the Gloucestershire / Worcestershire border near Broadway. This British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) survey counts breeding birds, with two visits in April and June to log the birds encountered along two transects running through an assigned 1 km square.  The BBS itself is great to be part of: it's been running annually since 1994 and the data enables a detailed analysis of population trends for over 100 UK breeding birds.  This provides massively valuable input to discussions about the impact of changing climate and land-use on the nation's wildlife for the Government and organisations like RSPB.  I'm lucky with my square that it's very scenic and has plenty of wildlife, so as well as feeling like a worthy citizen I get to enjoy some good birding. 

#158 Blue-tailed Damselfly

I was wondering when I was going to find my first garden dragonfly or damselfly. Where here he (I think) is; a Blue-tailed Damselfly resting up in my tomato plants.

#158 Blue-tailed Damselfly

Over 150 species

Had a good few days adding some new species including my first pipistrelle bats of the year, a passing speckled wood butterfly (no photos sadly) and even a couple of trees I hadn't noticed before (very small ash and beech saplings).  Small fauna included a smooth glass snail, pollen beetles (which really seem to like yellow Hypericum flowers) and a Capsus ater capsid beetle which flew in through the window, but should normally be sucking the sap out of grass stems in a nearby meadow.

#150 Smooth Glass Snail

#153 Pollen Beetle

#152 Capsus ater Capsid bug

Beware of the Flower Bug

Flower bugs come with a nasty bite; one of the garden's predators - this species #139 Deraeocoris flavilinea is actually (another) alien species, which has spread out from the Mediterranean, reaching UK for the first time only in 1996. They live up in the trees normally, eating aphids and other small insects.

Flower Bug: #139 Deraeocoris flavilinea

Volunteering at Tewkesbury Nature Reserve

Gabi and I have joined the team at Tewkesbury Nature Reserve doing some hedge laying and cutting back grass (the old-fashioned way).  The reserve is on flood plains near Tewkesbury and is often totally submerged in winter, hence it is set aside as a green space for the local community.  There's no shortage of work to do to manage and improve this site.  Sessions are on Tuesday evening, so if we're aching a bit on Wednesday mornings, that's why!

New Bugs

A couple of Scarlet Tiger moths (#81) around the garden this morning enabling me to get decent photos, and my first ladybird, #124 a Harlequin Ladybird.  These ladybirds are non-native ones from Asia that have been accidentally introduced and are increasing fast in population - I hope that they can co-exist ok alongside the native ladybird species.

#81 Scarlet Tiger

#124 Harlequin Ladybird

Counting skylarks on Bredon Hill

Undertook a site survey on the Overbury Estate for the local FWAG (Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group).  Happy to report there were plenty of skylarks and other farmland birds on the hill, where the fields are managed very sensitively: low grazing levels, wide field margins, minimum spraying. Lots of butterflies and wild flowers too, including white campion, grass vetchling and common rockrose.

White Campion

Grass Vetchling

Common Rockrose