A Garden Surprise of the Green-Winged Kind

 

I was thrilled to find what I think is a Fairy Longhorn Moth from the family Adelidae in our garden yesterday. We usually have a few each year; they are such fascinating insects. 

 

I was also keeping an eye out for butterflies yesterday afternoon when I thought I saw what at first seemed to be a 'metallic moth' with iridescent outer wings. I was a good few metres away and reliant on my camera's 30x zoom. It seemed worth a go, though by then I was shooting blind into the Euonymus leaves you see below. I blew the picture up today, and while the quality is poor, I think you will agree that there is a Green Hairstreak lurking in the photo. I am particularly delighted as this is a species I have only encountered about four times before, and now I have three garden records and another butterfly to add to my Garden Butterfly Survey list.  

 

 

 

Nomad Bee (?) on Dandelion

 

 

 

We have various insects landing on the Dandelions at the moment. This seems to be a new one for my garden list. I am not exactly sure what kind of ?bee it is, but judging by a thread on the Suffolk Wildlife Facebook group, it seems to be a Nomad bee, perhaps akin to Nomada goodeniana, though I fear the antennae are not sufficiently orange in hue for this particular variety. Those two yellow spots made me stop and take a second look. I shall post the photo on iSpot.  

 

 

P.S. Thanks to the kind (and knowledgeable) folk on iSpot, it seems this is a Nomada/Nomad bee, possibly a female marshamella.

Landguard and the Sea at Last

Wheatear, there were several in evidence today

 

We have had a couple of visits to the sea recently, which have been such a joy after all the long winter months of shielding at home. 

The beach at Landguard (Felixstowe) is partly nature reserve, and there are currently large swathes of fenced-off areas to allow species such as Ringed Plover to breed without disturbance. We saw a number of these beautiful birds from a distance. There was also a sizeable flock of Linnets.

We looked hard for seals this afternoon, but failed to see any. However, there was one in evidence on our previous visit (see further down).  

I hope we will have the chance to visit this bit of coast more frequently now that restrictions are lifting. How I have missed the sea!

 

 

My Puffin Photograph on the Cover of 'Reading Between The Lines' by Neil Leadbeater

Littoral Press, £8.50

 

Those who follow my blog posts, and perhaps particularly this one, will know that (in normal times) I enjoy watching Puffins as they move about on and off our coastal cliffs. I am thrilled to have one of my Puffin photographs on the cover of Neil Leadbeater's new poetry collection, published by Mervyn Linford of Littoral Press. David and I met Neil back in 2011 as fellow participants at Swansea's First International Festival of Poetry, organised by Peter Thabit Jones of The Seventh Quarry Press (Swansea) with Stanley H. Barkan of Cross-Cultural Communications (New York).

This fine collection includes poems rooted in a variety of rural (e.g. Tarr Steps), coastal (e.g. Aldeburgh) and urban (e.g. Port of Tyne) landscapes. A compelling sense of musicality pervades much of Neil's work, aided and abetted by a sprinkling of alliterations and allusions. I have been particularly enjoying the poem sequences ... and the Puffin poem, of course!  

P.S. This has also been posted on my Poetry and Writing blog since the subject was relevant to both.  

Wildflowers in our Wild Garden

 

Two more flowers for the list ...

 

 My fledgling list of wildflowers seen in the garden ...

1. Daisy (20  February)

2. Violet (18 March)

3. Chickweed (19 March)

4. Dandelion (19 March)

5. Herb Robert (9 April)

6. Red Valerian (29 March)

7. Goosegrass (with tiny white flowers) (21 May)

8. Buttercup (21 May)

9. Red Dead Nettle (21 May)

10. Common Storksbill (24 May)

11. Red Clover (25 May)

 

I am finding it a bit of a challenge to distinguish between the wild 'weeds' and the wild 'flowers'. We have nettles and goosegrass growing at the moment; but since these do not have obvious flowers, I have not counted them. We also have a stalk of Aquilegia, and having read this page, I am wondering whether it ought to be included since it seems it is not the 'garden escape' I asssumed it to be, but rather a British wildflower that has become domesticated!

 

Spot the Dragon and the Sutton Hoo Bluebells

 

I love bluebells, partly because blue is my favourite colour and there are not many flowers that have such an intensity of blue colouring, and partly because they remind me of nursery school visits to Kippington Meadow where we formed a circle and danced, singing 'In and out the dusty bluebells'. I wonder if any of you played this 'song-game' when you were also very young.  

We saw the bluebells in this post yesterday in the woods that form part of the Sutton Hoo estate. There was also plenty of Hawthorn blossom.

 

 

Sutton Hoo overlooks the river Deben and the town on Woodbridge. The tide was going out at speed. 

 

Here be dragons in the wood ...

 

 

... but what I didn't know until yesterday was that this dragon's name appears to be 'Spot'.   ;-)

 

There were one or two winged insects flitting about on the gorse. I wonder what the white sphere is at the top of the red arrow. I am guessing it may be an egg or perhaps pupa of some kind.  

 

Who knows if this impressive den, created with last year's bracken, was meant to resemble an ancient dwelling? 

 

I had wondered if the tiny pink flower below was a type of Storksbill. Perhaps I need to post it on iSpot. 

 * * *

Meanwhile, back in our Suffolk garden the Bee-flies have been making the most of our Dandelions and Honeybees have been busy gathering amber-gold pollen.

 

The Return of the Insects: Ants and Wasps in Suffolk

 

I have been in the CEV Covid-19 category and in receipt of government letters so have hardly left the house for a year. However, I am now fully vaccinated and able to enjoy a little more of the world beyond my window. We took a trip to Sutton Hoo today to see the bluebells (ah, bluebells! how I missed them last year), and while we were there, encountered this tiny ant laboriously moving a large white bundle from one place to another over the scrubby heathland floor. The bundle looks a bit cocoon-like. We have posted David's photo (the top one) on iSpot, but do leave a comment if you know what is going on. 

* 

The photos below were taken just up the road from Sutton Hoo at Sutton Heath. I am guessing the black insect with red abdominal stripes is a sand-wasp of some variety. I will add an ID if I can find one!

P.S. Update on the two Sutton Heath photos immediately above. 

Thanks to one of the kind people on iSpot I now know that this is a Black Banded Spider Wasp (Anoplius (Arachnophroctonus) viaticus). There is more information here. I love it when I see (what is to me) a new species; the sandy heathland here in Suffolk produces unusual surprises like this from time to time. 

Garden Trailcam ... and RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch Results

Not exactly 'wildlife', but we had fun uploading the Trailcam pictures today ... and finding these rather shifty bright eyes. We have actually seen the cat, which is grey and white, in the daylight now, but have no idea where it lives. 

 

It features again in the next photograph from the day before. 

This looks like one of the males, but 'Star', the female Blackbird with a white (leucistic?) mark, has also been strutting about. She seems to like the grassy path we made for my daily exercise during the first lockdown, when we stopped mowing what was then a lawn.

 

The photo above shows something at the tip of the arrow. I know because the next photograph, taken a couple of minutes later, shows a space here. Could it a be a rather round Blue tit? I know it's hard to tell, especially in terms of scale, though the planter is about 30cm high.

Speaking of Blue tits, the RSPB have released this year's figures for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. These are the the Top Ten 2021 species from the records that were submitted ...

Back at the start of February I recorded my survey results for our garden, which you can see here. It seems to me that the general picture (above), with the notable exception of House Sparrows, corresponds pretty closely with our own findings. We recorded the following nine species, all of which feature on the RSPB list. Birds were counted according to the maximum number of a given species seen in the garden at the same time, rather than sequentially over the hour.

 

1. Blue tit (2nd on national list)

2. Starling (3rd on national list)

3. Long-tailed tit (10th on national list)

4. Goldfinch (8th on national list)

5. Woodpigeon (also 5th on national list)

6. Blackbird (4th on national list)

7. Great tit (also 7th on national list)

8. Magpie (also 9th on national list)

9. Robin (6th on national list)

 

Happily, we are now having regular garden sightings of House Sparrows. I just hope the feline visitor gives them a chance.

  

 

Sparrows and a Dash of Spring Colour

 

 

We are thrilled to have Sparrows in the garden this year. A hedge was disturbed by some building work a few houses away, and I am guessing that the birds have moved up to a hedge a bit nearer our home. 

Easter in our part of Suffolk was pretty chilly this year. We had bits of sunshine (followed by a snowstorm two days ago), but the weather has been cold and blustery at times. Despite the fluctuating temperatures, we have been enjoying the spring bulbs and the bee-flies. I haven't seen a butterfly for days, but we have had some welcome colour in the garden ... such as these tulips. 

I think this is a Brown carder bee on the Dandelion.

Good to see (four) more 7-spot ladybirds

I couldn't resist showing a photo of this beautiful (and delicious) Easter gift in the form of a ginger biscuit sheep!

One of several Bee-flies

I wonder how long it will be before the next butterfly appears ... The chart below shows my sightings (or lack of them) for January, February and March 2021. The Butterfly Conservation Garden Butterfly Survey charts show the highest number of butterflies seen at one time, rather than how many were seen in total.