'On a Knife Edge' Review

 

 

Back in May I blogged about this book on my Poetry and Other Writing blog. In case you missed it, I shall re-post my words here. Juliet Wilson has written a review of On a Knife Edge, which you can read here on her Crafty Green Poet blog. Do take a look. And thank you, CGP, for mentioning my own recent collection of poems, Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021).   

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On a Knife Edge was published by Suffolk Poetry Society as a response to the diminishing state of nature report. It forms part of a collaboration between the Society and The Lettering Arts Trust (Snape), where an exhibition of the same name opened in July. I am delighted to have two poems and a micro-poem about IUCN red-listed species included in the book. 

The topic resonates closely with Robert Macfarlane's work (supported by Jackie Morris and her artwork) in response to an increasing concern over the fact that 'nature words' (for the 'lost words', see here) were being removed from the 2007 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Apparently space was needed for words deemed more valuable in a digital and technical age. You can read my post here about a previous exhibition at The Lettering Arts Trust on this subject. 

On a Knife Edge was primarily created by Derek Adams, Lynne Nesbit, Beth Soule and Colin Whyles. It can be purchased here. 

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.

Surprise Moth on the White Buddleia

I fear I am rather scraping the barrel with the quality of these photographs; but, once again, they serve as useful record shots. Our white buddleia has at long last come into its own this year, attracting the occasional Comma, Peacock, Painted Lady and Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, along with good numbers of Red Admiral and Small White. There have been plenty of bees on the higher branches. 

We were sitting outside on Thursday afternoon when a particularly 'fluttery' insect caught my attention and I knew almost instinctively that it was a Hummingbird Hawk-moth, a garden first for us. I am adding the sighting to my home-patch list. The moth was very skittish and hard to photograph. It did not hang around for long, but it was there and we both saw it. 

I last saw one of these beautiful insects here in Suffolk a few years ago. Prior to that, my sightings had been in the western Peloponnese - here. You can read more about the Hummingbird Hawk-moth here on the Butterfly Conservation site.

 

A Flutter of Butterflies

Painted Lady

It has not been a good season for butterflies here in our Suffolk garden, though we had a few Brown Argus earlier on and even a Green Hairstreak. However, Red Admirals seem to have flourished in recent days and even the white Buddleia has been awash with their colourful wings. 

We have been thrilled to see a few Painted Ladies, like the one in the picture above that landed on one of the old insect houses. This house has been taken over by ants; you can see their earthworks in the holes. Last summer this same insect house was the domain of Leafcutter bees, who were a joy to watch as they came in and out with their rolled-leaf parcels. 

 

Comma

Meadow Brown, numbers down on 2020

A rather travel-worn Red Admiral

Peacock, one of the few

Red Admiral, one of the many more numerous

Small White (we have had Large Whites, too)

 

Small Tortoiseshell, a slightly better 'garden season' for these

We also had a single male Brimstone a few days ago followed by a Speckled Wood, but they didn't stay around long enough for a photograph. 

 

Painted Lady, wings closed

 

Common Blue Butterflies at Landguard, Felixstowe

 

We seem to have had a very breezy, and at times blustery, summer here in our corner of the east coast. Small butterflies, like the blues, tend to hide away in the long grass and are not easy to see. If they brave the elements by clinging to Viper's Bugloss, Ragwort or grass seedheads, they sway about and can be very difficult to photograph!  

But I love blue butterflies (which always bring to mind 'Blue-Butterfly Day', Robert Frost's springtime poem), and am always glad when I encounter them. The photographs in this post were taken this last weekend on the nature reserve at Landguard, which nestles between the North Sea and the container port of Felixstowe. We think we also saw one or two Brown Argus; these insects are not easy to distinguish from Common Blue females, and in such windy conditions, it was hard to be sure. However, I think the butterflies in these photos are all Common Blue. 

 

Wasp Spider in the Garden ... at last!

 

 

Having kept a careful eye on last year's Wasp Spiders and then their extraordinary egg-sacs, we were beginning to think that the small 'colony' in our Suffolk garden had died out over the winter. This however was not the case, at least not the case entirely, for (while the photo below was taken in 2020) the photo above was taken yesterday. What fascinating arachnids these are! The one above shows the underside; and the one below, the top of the spider's abdomen.

As a postscript to this post I should add that some hours after taking the top photograph, we returned to 'check on' the spider, only to find a large wasp in the grass by the web. What we failed to ascertain was whether the spider was attacking the insect or the other way around. I rather thought the spider had had its day; but no, a little later on there it was, and the wasp had disappeared. Do leave a comment if you can explain what was going on. I have failed to find a website that explains how Wasp Spiders and wasps behave towards one another. 

 

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Previous post (here): Tiger moths, Butterflies ... and Driftwood by Starlight, my new poetry collection.

 

Tiger moths, Butterflies ... and 'Driftwood by Starlight', my new poetry collection

 

 

It seems a while since I last posted about wildlife on this blog. There are various reasons for this including the following: 

(a) having postponed last year's holiday, we finally got away to Cornwall.

(b) I have been busy with the launch of my new poetry collection and other (less exciting!) matters that accrued in the run up to it.

Anyway, the photographs show our favourite moth of the season so far, a Scarlet Tiger seen in the grounds of NT Cotehele, on the banks of the river Tamar. The moth was high up in a tree, which is why the photographs are fairly small. 

The photograph below shows the same species (I believe), also taken in Cornwall, this time at NT Trerice two years ago. This was our first sighting ever of the species, and on this occasion it opened its wings, displaying the reason for its name.

 

 

On the subject of lepidoptera, we took full advantage of the three weeks of the Big Butterfly Count organised by Butterfly Conservation. Each time we sat outside for coffee, lunch or mugs of tea we tried to do a 15 minute count, which was then submitted to the survey. 

This time last year we did much the same, and there were times when it was literally a case of take a bite, log a butterfly, take a sip, log two. It wasn't a bit like that this year; the butterflies arrived in dribs and drabs, but over the course of a week or so numbers began to mount. Even so, they don't look particularly good when set alongside those for 2020! My thanks to David for preparing these charts, which make most sense when you read them together. 

 

 

We are at last beginning to see a decent increase in Red Admirals, perhaps because the white Buddleia has finally begun to come out in our garden. We even had a male Brimstone earlier, the first for a while. 

I began this post with a Scarlet Tiger moth. One of the poems in my new collection concerns the larva of a different Tiger moth species. Driftwood by Starlight can be bought online (£6.99, $10) in The Seventh Quarry Press online shop (here). Some of you will know the Crafty Green Poet blog, where you can read a review (thank you, Juliet!).

 

Launch day

 

Driftwood by Starlight by Caroline Gill, published June 2021, available from The Seventh Quarry Press

'The beautifully-crafted poems in Caroline Gill's debut full-length collection more than live up to the appeal of its Cornish cove cover and title. With elegance and finesse, she masters a range of traditional forms, all of which beg to be read aloud so their musicality can be fully relished. In several poems, joy and wonder in the natural world co-exist with a deep, questioning concern for threatened species from the puffin to the fen raft spider, while Gill's imagery, particularly where birdlife's concerned – 'the curlew's bill of boomerang design', 'white/grenades explode as gannets pierce the sea' – surprises and delights in equal measure.'

 

Susan Richardson, author of Words the Turtle Taught Me 

(Cinnamon Press, 2018), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award

'Driftwood by Starlight', my new poetry collection

Publication day has come, and Driftwood by Starlight, my first full-length poetry collection has arrived. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Peter Thabit Jones, my publisher.

The book can be ordered here from Peter's online shop at The Seventh Quarry Press. Susan Richardson has written these very generous words for the back-cover blurb ...

 

Those of you who are kind enough to visit or follow this blog will not be surprised to hear that while there are some more historical and archaeological poems, the natural world looms large. Most poems are set on or around the coast of Wales, Scotland and England (Cornwall especially, which features on the cover photograph by Laurence Hartwell). I hope some of you may decide to buy a copy and that you will find something particular that resonates with you. 

 

 

#30DaysWild, Day 9, A Streak of Green

 

We sat outside, drinking our coffee, in the hope that we might see some butterflies. Apart from a couple of Soldier Beetles and two 7-spot Ladybirds in the long grass, there were few insects making their presence known. After a few minutes we noticed a couple of lively Holly Blues on the wing. 

I thought perhaps there might be some bees on the Ceanothus so went over to inspect, when a flutter of iridescence caught my eye in the form of a Green Hairstreak. I had never seen a Hairstreak of any description before our move to Suffolk nearly a decade ago, and have now seen three species, the Green and the Purple in our garden, and the White-letter in the Local Nature Reserve up the road.

My thanks to David for the top two photographs. I have recorded today's butterfly sightings on the Garden Butterfly Survey. 

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P.S. In case any of you were here earlier today, I had posted my updated Garden Species List, but something happened to the formatting, so I have withdrawn that post while I sort out the code. 

 P.P.S. No further False Widow sightings ... to date.