Butterflies on Lavender

It's colder today and the lavender is coming to an end, but here's a few snaps of butterflies that have been in the garden over the last couple of weeks.  One or two of Common Blue, Gatekeeper and Meadow Brown butterflies have been through on a more or less daily basis during early August.  Though there have been plenty of Large and Small Whites, often they've not stopped for the flowers, and I've had Comma and Red Admiral visiting a few times.  Other species which I might have expected, like Small Tortoiseshell, which I remember as being so common when I was a kid, seem very scarce - only seen 2-3 times this year.  And so far I didn't see a single Peacock or Painted Lady in the garden despite it seemingly being a good year for butterflies.  It's thought the decline of some of these butterfly species might be due to a parasitic fly (Sturmia bella) that has spread from the Continent in recent years.  We sent in some counts to Butterfly Conservation's Big Butterfly Count - be interested to see the outcome from their UK survey when it comes out.

#259 Common Blue butterfly (female)

#262 Gatekeeper butterfly

176 Meadow Brown butterfly

102 Large White butterfly

Freeing the Pond Olive Mayfly

Once again the brown wheelie bin for garden waste came up trumps with a new species for the backyard - this time my first mayfly, a Pond Olive (#301) with its lovely long tail streamers.  Mayflies are usually found by ponds and streams, so God knows how it got in my compost bin, as I'd only been pulling up some potato plants and a few weeds; certainly nothing from any pond.  Apparently it's a myth that mayflies only live for a day - even so, spending a large proportion of your life shut in a dark wheelie bin is a bit tragic.  I was happy to liberate it.

A morning of birds

A beautiful sunny, still and cool morning, starting to feel even a bit autumnal.  There were lots of birds around, especially in the neighbours' large birch trees at the foot of the garden.  Family groups of blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, blackbirds and house sparrows were more apparent than usual.  A singing willow warbler and a lesser whitethoat (new for the garden and species #313 for the microEden list) were not locals. They are migrant warblers slowly moving south & west, feeding up for the long migration to Africa as they go.  Families of swallows, house martins and swifts were overhead - the swifts will be gone any day now, heading South.  By 10.00 am the birds are almost silent - you'd never know they were there.

It seems a good time to mention the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and their Garden Birdwatch survey that collects data - weekly maximum counts - of the bird species in your garden.  You can also optionally record other wildlife like mammals, butterflies, etc.  This is great as everyone's records build up a very representative dataset of changes in bird populations in gardens across the UK.  The website it interesting.  Consider signing up - It's not too much of a commitment (https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/gbw)

The MicroEden backyard on an August morning

Poisons in the Garden

These two common plants that crop up as garden weeds are both very poisonous. 

The red berries of Lords & Ladies add some nice late-summer colour in shady areas of the garden, but there's a good reason why they don't get eaten by the birds - they're very poisonous.  Thankfully they are so unpleasant tasting that nobody would ever get to eat enough of them to have a dangerous dose.  

The white flowers, one of many different kinds of similar-looking umbellifer is called Fool's Parsley, as it looks superficially like parsley or chervil, but can be distinguished by the small spurs that hang down under the flowers and seed heads.  Like many other umbelliferae, such as hemlock, it's pretty poisonous; though apparently it was also used in the past as a medicine for children's stomach aches - hopefully only in small doses!

#41 Lords and Ladies

#269 Fools Parsley

300 Species in my Backyard in 2 months

More or less on the 2 month mark, I added a handful of species to achieve a total of 300 species in the microEden backyard.  The fennel seems to be the most attractive pollen source for flies, hoverflies and wasps,  The population of wasps is really taking off right now, with them all around us as soon as we sit outside for a meal.

The new species in the last couple of days include #297 common orange legionnaire fly, #298 pied hoverfly and #300 a solitary bee Ectemnius continuus.  The solitary bee is a predator, digging a nest hole in wood and taking flies, etc back for its larvae - it has strong looking legs, perhaps for all that digging.  On the fennel though it was more interested in the flowers than any of its fellow insects.

#297 Common Orange Legionnaire

#298 Pied Hoverfly

#300 Solitary Bee Ectemnius continuus

Common Toad

Nice to find this common toad; which are often around in the garden, but not so much this year.  He/she goes well with the common frogs that we've had around the pond - the adult one is now joined by some of this year's froglets, who are keeping a low profile under the rocks surrounding the pond basin.

Stinkbugs Emerging

These two were the first shield bugs of the season.  On the left the Birch Shieldbug (#282), several of which have been blown out of the trees around the garden by the strong winds of the last couple of days.  On the right a Red-legged Shieldbug (#292), this one saved from drowning in the paddling pool.  These shield shaped bugs are also often called stink bugs as the smell bad when you squash them, and presumably they taste bad to birds as well.  They're pretty bugs, but not especially a gardeners friend as they live by sucking the sap from plants and hence can become a pest, but I don't mind them...

#282 Birch Shieldbug

#292 Red-legged Shieldbug

Orthoptera in the Paddling Pool

A whole run of interesting insects being fished out of the kids paddling pool.  An adult Oak Bush Cricket with very impressive antennae - maybe it was the same one I rescued as a nymph from the brown wheelie bin earlier in the summer!  We don't have much in the way of long grass, so this grasshopper was a first for the garden.  Judging from its colour and wing length, I identified it as Lesser Marsh Grasshopper, a species which has been extending its range north in UK.  It's nice to find interesting insects like this on my patch.

#154 Oak Bush Cricket

#290 Lesser Marsh Grasshopper

Figwort Sawfly (Tenthredo scrophulariae)

This looks like a shiny kind of wasp taking a rest in the veg plot, but after some book-work I reckon it's a Figwort Sawfly (#278). Working out the identification is quite difficult as there are several other parasitic wasps and wasp mimicking nomad bees and hoverflies that look pretty similar. This sawfly’s larvae live on the figwort plant, while the adults hunt smaller insects.

Up on the Roof

I had to clean out the guttering, so while I was making a rare trip up a ladder to check the roof, I thought I'd also check out the ecology of this so far unexplored place.  I hadn't really tried to sort out the garden's mosses and lichens yet either, but the roof tiles are definitely the best place to go looking for them.  There was quite an impressive collection of yellow and grey ones, all seemingly doing okay despite us hardly having had any rain for several weeks.  Probably I'll need to go up again, but some of the species I did find included the yellow/orange Caloplaca aurantia (#274), flakey grey/green Physcia caesia (#275) and Aspicilia contorta (#276) with its grey/white circular pock-marks.  Also plenty of Redshank Moss (#274); the main reason I needed to clean out the gutter in the first place.

Up on the Roof

#274 Caloplaca aurantia

#275 Physcia caesia

Making Cheese at Greystones Farm

Back at the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust reserve at Greystones Farm, Bourton-on-the-Water today to pick up my cheese.  I went on a cheese-making course last week with Simon Weaver Cotswold Organic Dairy.  The course was a pilot for a series of courses to be run at the farm starting sometime in August, and it was really great.  Learned so much about about different types of cheese and how to make them, and now I have a big Tomme de Savoie maturing in the kitchen, ready to eat in about a month.  There's not many places where you can see the cows, visit the wildflower meadows that feed them, watch the milking and then make cheese from the fresh milk.  Big thanks to Roger Crudge, the Simon Weaver Dairy team and GWT for a fantastic day.

Checking the Set

Cutting the Curd

Leave to mature for a month

Details of forthcoming courses are to be found at https://www.simonweaverorganic.co.uk/courses

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.