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| Having thought we had had no Hedgehog sightings yet, the Trailcam proved me wrong. |
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| A chilly evening |
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| Fat Mouse (or a descendant) looking as cute as ever |
Have you been watching 'Attenborough's Secret garden: the Wildlife on our Doorstep'? The mouse narrative in the episode we watched tonight was extraordinary, not forgetting the Swallows.
Previous post: an Adder at Minsmere - here.
I have just taken part in the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. It is always interesting (and fun) to sit down with a mug of coffee, a notebook and a pair of binoculars. The Jay and the Goldfinch (a single one, which is unusual) were a close call at the end, and sadly the semi-regular Greenfinches failed to show up during the hour. I have a hunch I saw many more Blue tits than the figure suggests, but I only recorded the number I definitely saw at a given time. I was surprised that there was only one Wood Pigeon.
If you haven't taken part, you can still do so today (24 Jan. 2026) or tomorrow.
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| Dunnock |
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| Blue tit |
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| Blue tit and Great tit |
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| Jay |
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| Photo credit: David Gill |
We were absolutely thrilled to find this beautiful insect, a summer visitor, on our self-seeded Valerian this morning. The Valerian comes up each spring in our left-to-nature garden and has often attracted the Hummingbird Hawk-moth, but this was rather different.
The wings were flapping so fast that they hardly show up on my photos below, so I am grateful to David for his picture above.
I began a journaling-style sketch of the moth; I may post it in due course ...
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.
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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 |
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| Rushing for the food before the cats and mice find it first ... |
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| Gently does it ... |
David and I joined Butterfly Conservation at the start of the lockdowns. For the last two years I have been counting butterflies for the Garden Butterfly Survey.
Butterfly Conservation has launched a new initiative called 'Wild Spaces'. Participants have the chance to write about their particular wild space and to post photographs. They also have the opportunity to see who else is taking part in their area (for obvious security reasons actual addresses are not shown).
You can read about the project here.
Sadly, with a few exceptions such as Holly Blue and Orange Tip, this has not been a good start to the 'butterfly season' for us in our neck of the woods. We noticed that Matthew Oates was saying much the same on X (Twitter) today. However, we finally saw our first Meadow Brown on Saturday, so perhaps things will start to pick up ...
I am absolutely delighted to find that we have a resident frog in both our mini-ponds. Last summer we had one 'regular' with very occasional sightings of a second, so it is exciting to start my 2024 frog observations with two.
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| Shame about the leaf! |
For βρεκεκεκέξ see here.
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| We think this is a Song Thrush. rather than a Mistle Thrush: do you agree? |
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| Robin taking off? |
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| A hungry hedgehog |
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| Hedgehog and snail |
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| Hedgehog and snail (2) |
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| These self-seeded Oxeye Daisies are very popular with bees and beetles |
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| We would love to think that butterflies were attracted to our butterfly house |
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| Common Blue Damselfly, 29 May 2024 |
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| Sadly some of our ladybirds are Harlequins |
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| Herbs in a trough |
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| Rather scruffy insect hotels, used this year by Red Mason bees |
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| Nettles galore! |
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| Dark Bush Cricket (nymph) |
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| Early Bumblebee on self-seeded Knapweed |
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| One of several Robins |
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| One of many seedheads, awaiting the wind |
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| A largely green scene after a very wet spring |
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| Yellow flag by the mini-ponds. We keep hoping for a(nother) frog... |
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| We have nightly visits from a hedgehog. Two visited on 25 April 2023 as you can see. |
Click here to see my updated species list.
