Hedgehog Update

Look who's watching ...

 

It has been a joy to discover via the Trailcam just how often the hedgehog has been visiting our garden, though we are rather concerned that a local cat has been keeping a rather close eye on it. We have a hedgehog house and provide water. We put out fresh supplies of dried food containing insects each evening. David saw the hedgehog a few nights ago, but mostly we rely on the camera to keep us in the picture.  

 

Look at those feline eyes in the background.

The Return of the Hedgehog

 

Thanks to the Trailcam, we were absolutely thrilled to find that a hedgehog had been visiting our garden most nights last week. Of course, we can't tell whether it is the one who came to our door for food and water nearly every evening last summer, but who knows ...

Wasp Spiders and their Egg-Sacs

Female Wasp Spider, home patch

We first encountered these fascinating spiders (Argiope bruennichi) in September 2020. Between 5th and 9th September last year I recorded four females, the large striped ones, in our home patch. 

We have enjoyed watching them again this year, though we have never seen more than three at a given time. This morning we discovered a second egg-sac in the long grass, so we hope this means that there will be more Wasp Spiders in 2022. 

These spiders like natural grassland, and we suspect it is our lack of mowing, the result of a pledge we made at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust Summit, that has attracted them to our wild garden. The long grass has certainly attracted grasshoppers, a key food source.

The discovery of a new egg-sac seemed a good moment to post some of our Wasp Spider photos. I hope you enjoy them!

Female with prey

Ditto

Female with egg-sac

Female near the stabilimentum

 

You can read about the 'ultra-violet reflective' stabilimentum or zigzag section of web here in the beginning of an article.

Underside of female (with egg-sac)

Female with egg-sac

Damp weather; female with parcel of prey

Stabilimentum

Evidence of two different spider species in close proximity

 

Female upside-down, with egg-sac

Female and egg-sac

Female

Underside of female. Stabilimentum

 

Stabilimentum

Do you see the tiny spider on the right? Is this a different species?

The male Wasp Spider is much smaller than the female. It is light brown and has two yellow lines running along the underneath of the abdomen.

Is the same spider as the tiny curled creature in the photo above?

... and this? Do leave a comment if you know.

Wasp Spider egg-sac spotted on Sutton Heath near Woodbridge

My thanks to David (Gill) for a couple of the photographs in this post.

Ground Bug

I found this tiny insect (sorry about poor record shot) on a wooden post in the garden a few days ago. The kind folk on iSpot and one of the local wildlife Facebook groups have helped me identify it as Rhyparochromus vulgaris, though there is a similar species, Rhyparochromus pini. Ironically for an insect climbing up a post, the Rhyparochromus is a Ground Bug. Apparently the species has not been in the UK for many years. 

I had thought initially that it was perhaps a Fire bug (see one here, if you scroll down) in an early stage of development as we come across these colourful insects in the summer, but it is clearly something else altogether, and a new species for my garden list. A further species that is similar in appearance is the Raglius alboacuminatus, which you can read about here.

Insects on our Flowers

There have been a few sunny spells here this week, though as I type it looks as if a thunder storm is not very far away. It has been lovely to see insects nectaring on the flower heads. The photo above and the two immediately below show (as you might guess) a Thick-legged Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis).

I can tell it is a male by the bulge in its femora.

This species seems to favour the southern half of the UK: I see I recorded these insects at WWT Llanelli back in 2011 when we lived in Swansea. I must add my latest sighting to my home-patch list.  

Bees have been enjoying the yellow Mouse-ear Hawkweed flowers...

...and the less wild Osteospermum (below).

I thought I would share a photo of a corner of our wild patch. It is a shady area, covered by Buddleia and Acer Negundo, the Box Maple. I can see strands of Hawthorn, nettles and a mass of Herb Robert. I suspect the insects (and snails) are there, but I have hardly seen any in this corner of the garden yet.



The photo below shows our insect houses a few weeks ago at the start of May. The only activity I have noticed so far is the scuttling of an occasional ant.

The photo below was taken yesterday: the pansies may not be wild (the mini-pond marks the entrance to the wild patch), but they are looking lovely and will hopefully prove attractive to flying insects of one sort or another.

I am so enjoying the Large Red Damselflies: I wonder whether the water feature is attracting them or whether it is the bramble bush!

I wonder if, like us, you enjoyed Chris Packham's Tree Slug moon graph on BBC Springwatch. This blog attempts to highlight the fact that nature is full of the wild and wonderful; and when we went outside a few minutes ago to look for bats, which failed to appear, we saw a couple of large Cockchafers (or perhaps Stag Beetles) floating around the sky, looking like airborne aliens.

Isle of Wight (2): Brading Roman Villa

I mentioned in my last post that I would be adding a few photos of our expeditions to a couple of the Roman villas on the island. The first villa we visited was Brading, and what a wonderful place it was.

A lot of information has been gathered about the Roman era on the Isle of Wight. The island was known as Vectis to the Romans. 

As we walked towards the entrance, my eye was diverted by this beautiful re-creation of a Roman garden. The board in the photo below shows the layout. It was early in the season (in fact we were told that the 'season', i.e. the holiday season, would not begin until Easter Saturday), but there were still bright tints and touches of colour, as you can probably see.

I couldn't help noticing the wild Violets, too. They seemed much larger than the ones we usually encounter here in Suffolk. Some were veering towards pink in tone. 

The staff at the villa are very wildlife-aware, and we walked around the building that houses the mosaics to see Medusa's wildlife meadow. I suspect the sign was made with school parties in mind, but I feel a wildlife garden should appeal to all.

Sadly, we were too early (since this was a long winter) for butterflies, but we did spot the rather impressive creature in the photo below! 

Much of the villa itself is under cover in a building that nestles beneath the heights of Brading Down, where we had a picnic lunch one day.

Once inside, we visited the cafe, which was very good: the chocolate tiffin was excellent!

By this time we were itching to see the mosaics and other Roman remains. And what fantastic mosaics they were.

A good reconstruction can be very helpful; but, of course, not all reconstructions are good. I was particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the Roman tile-layer (below) and the modern excavator (two below). To see these men side by side, as they were in the display, seemed to me, in one of those rare moments of inspiration, to represent not only the era of Roman occupation on the island but also the arc of history and the sheer thrill of archaeology itself. This strange sense of distance and connection is why I was so intrigued by my first childhood visit to Lullingstone Roman villa in Kent, and why I went on to study (and teach) classical civilisation.   

When I was looking through my photos on my return and trying to remember the contexts, I came across this excellent blog about the Brading mosaics. We have Orpheus in the scene below, with a monkey and what may be the representation of a Chough (though it looks more like a Moorhen to me, but with red legs!).

Which bird do you think this was meant to be, I wonder?

Birds were not only represented in mosaic, but also in fresco, as you can see below.

Having mentioned the art of reconstruction, I want in passing to mention the skill of producing helpful labels. Presumably the use of the first person in the one below, just one of a number on site, is to make you feel welcomed into the world of Roman Britain by your (imaginary) Roman guide.

I particularly liked the fox in the mosaic!

And I can't resist adding in this photo of a real urban fox we saw some miles away in Ryde. It is a very poor quality shot, I'm afraid, thanks to the need to be quick, the poor light levels and the reflection from the windscreen, but it has a certain spark!

The Roman diet included shellfish of various kinds. We found some wonderful shells on the island, and I suspect many of the ones on display in the villa had been gathered (in Roman times) from local shorelines.

One of my best memories from that early trip to Lullingstone Roman villa was a tile with pawprints. A cat or dog had walked over it before the clay had set. The tile in the photo below from Brading has not only a pawprint (though it is not easy to see in the picture), but also a studded sandal mark and a human footprint. This kind of tile would have capped a floor of hypocaust.

And here are some remains of the underfloor hypocaust heating system at Brading.

I was going to add Newport Roman Villa into this post; but, on reflection, I think it can have a post of its own. So that will come next.