Here are some of the garden visitors who showed up during my hour ...
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| Blackbird |
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| Robin |
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| Blue tit |
Nearly a fortnight on ... and the hedgehog is still visiting.
I would love to know if s/he may yet hibernate. We have already had a cold snap when we had to break the ice on the water bowl. The advice seems to be to keep feeding while the animal continues to visit unless s/he looks very under weight or unwell.
A very happy new year,
filled with wildlife,
to all who are reading this post.
Some of you will know that we have been feeding a 'regular' hedgehog in our garden. We bought a hedgehog house just over a year ago in the hope that we might have a hibernating visitor.
The hedgehog has continued to delight us this year, but it seems she (we think it's a female) is reluctant to settle down, despite the icy temperatures. I know hedgehogs occasionally wait until mid-December to hibernate, but surely 4th January is rather late. We have been trying to feed her up with nightly meals and we so hope she makes it through to the spring.
We looked out the window yesterday morning at about 10.30 ... and were greeted with the sight of this rather magnificent toad. This is the second time we have seen the toad on our patio this summer.
I have decided to post the extremely poor record shot above as much as a note to myself as anything.
The point is that I saw the Migrant hawker in the lower half of this image, and took a quick photo, little realising that there was actually a second dragonfly above (see black arrow). Result: the top dragonfly has been cut in two unnecessarily. It was only a record shot (a quick first image in case the creature flew away), and as such the quality doesn't worry me too much; but what concerns me is the fact that even after this photograph had been taken, I still failed to notice the second insect. I have been thinking about William Blake and his famous, albeit metaphorical, line about seeing a universe in a sand particle; well, it seems I need to sharpen up my powers of observation and concentration considerably.
Below: this is a better image of the top dragon (which in mind at the time was the lower and only one, so presumably by this time the lower one had flown), showing off the distinctive yellow golf-tee marking on S2, just below the wings:
The photo below shows one of our two Wasp spiders. You can see a white food parcel near the top and what will become a second once the spider has completed her task. I'm wondering if she has wrapped up a small bee.
There have not been many butterflies about this week in the garden; perhaps it has been too windy. Even so, we have logged Peacock, Red Admiral, Large and Small White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Comma and Holly Blue. I wonder what the weekend will bring. I am still hoping to see my first Painted Lady of the season.
This dainty Brown Argus is the most recent butterfly to appear in our garden this year. It represents the 15th species spotted within our boundary. The chart below shows my records for the Garden Butterfly Survey. Naturally, some days produce more sightings than others depending on factors such as time in the garden, weather and butterfly cycles.
The garden had a large white Buddleia when we moved in over twelve years ago. It also had a range of trees and bushes. We have allowed the grass to grow long and have added a butterfly house, a large trough of Nasturtiums (I never know if these are primarily for the Large White caterpillars to eat or for us to enjoy!), Verbena bonariensis and some herbs. We also have three mini-ponds and a water bowl for the hedgehog, so water is always available.
The list will enlarge with a double-click.
The first column is for the scientific species name, followed by the common English name. Next comes the family name, e.g. Pieridae refers to the white (and 'white-ish') butterflies. The number column gives the total of butterflies seen between the dates of the first 2024 sighting on the left (column 5) and the most recent on the right. If my calculations are correct, the chart shows a total of 195 butterfly records since the late start of the 2024 butterfly season.
I would hope to see a Small Heath and a Common Blue by the end of the season. Watch this space!
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| © David Gill 2024 |
Some years ago we were delighted to find an Elephant Hawk-moth caterpillar very close to our home. This afternoon we discovered an adult moth in our long grass, in close proximity to the anthill where we found the Slow worm only yesterday. Another entry for our home patch list of species.
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| My photo ... to give an impression of the long grass location |
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| Larval stage, my photo taken close to home, 2021 |
Not the best photograph, but never mind.
There was a hush of great excitement this afternoon when this beautiful Slow worm was seen draping herself over a large anthill in the long grass in our wild garden.
We have seen Common lizards before on rare occasions and a single Grass snake last summer, but this was an exciting first for us. The black stripe over brown scales suggests a female. Slow worms are neither worms nor snakes; they are in fact legless lizards.
Like the Common lizard and the Grass snake, Slow worms are protected by law. We hope the visiting cats will avoid the anthills and long grass.
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| Scarlet Tiger moth, Anglesey Abbey, Cambs. |
We have been to the water mill at Anglesey Abbey on many occasions. We have often watched swans, dragonflies and damselflies. This time our eyes were averted by a fluttery flash of red: a Scarlet Tiger moth in flight. I have never seen these magnificent insects in the east of England before, and my Cornish sightings have been few and far between.
I loaded a photo on to iSpot, and one of the other contributors to the site suggested I contact the County Moth Recorder for Cambridgeshire. I have now had the ID confirmed (not that I was really in any doubt on this occasion), but I have also learned that this species appears to be moving east and that the predominant moth on a relatively nearby fen was in fact the Scarlet Tiger. What a magnificent creature to find in National Insect Week!
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| Scarlet Tiger |
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| Small Eggar (Eriogaster lanestris) larva, Anglesey Abbey |
I had imagined that the 'blanket-stitch' edging would aid identification considerably, but I drew a blank. Once again the folk on iSpot came to my rescue, suggesting an ID of Small Eggar, a 'Nationally Scarce' category B species. I see it usually turns up in the west but that there have been sightings in Norfolk.
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| Taken: 1 May 2024 |
Those who have visited my blog before will know that I have been keeping a list of the wildlife I see in our suburban Suffolk garden since 2014. For a creature to be counted, it must be seen within, underneath or above our boundary. Some years ago I began keeping an eye on the wildflowers (see here for the most recent list ... and also here) that we noticed in the garden. I may decide to combine the two lists at some point.
* = an identification given via iSpot.
Trailcam:
this has given us photos of a fox, various mice and birds and the hedgehog. The hedgehog
comes (for water and Yora insect-based food) nearly every night now that the hibernation season is over.
[R] = a regular visitor
[O] = an occasional one.
Incidentally, the Migrant Hawker sightings in the list below inspired one of the poems in my 2021 poetry collection, Driftwood by Starlight, which is is now available in the online shop for The Seventh Quarry Press. Do take a look here.
And now to my updated list...
Avian sightings
Mammal sightings
Amphibian sightings
Reptile sightings
Insect sightings
Molluscs
Arachnids
Unusual sightings
These strange Psyche casta cases make me think of the Caddisfly larva I have seen, but they are actually made and eventually shed by a moth.
Unusual residents include the False Widow spider (see here) and the Wasp Spider. I definitely prefer sharing a garden with the latter (see here)! You can just make out the beautiful egg-sac.
