Our 30 Days Wild : garden wildlife

Showing posts with label garden wildlife. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 June 2016

Day 30 #30DaysWild summing up

Well that is that - the end of our 30th Day, but not the end of wild days, long may they continue!

The day started with some sunshine and full of promise and it didn't disappoint with the arrival of our first Ringlet butterfly of the year in our garden, alas no camera to hand! we also had a warbler in our hedge, I am thinking it was a chiffchaff, although it could have been a willow warbler.
Then I found this 7-spot ladybird

good news with a few aphids about, the ants seemed to be appreciating these black aphids.

and what about the lawn patches we left to grow wild 30 days ago?
Well this is what we have now....

self-heal

At dinnertime a male sparrowhawk flew down onto our feeders, he was unsuccessful so he then just sat there for a minute or so, if I had known he would loiter I might have grabbed my camera, instead we all just sat there watching him!
...and just now we had a buzzard perch on one of the fence posts, with its prey on the other side of our track, just two or three metres from our garden too dark now for a photo, but we have plenty still happening and the promise of more still to come - I am very much looking forward to the butterflies and dragonflies still to visit us this year and all this borage busting into flower

A big Thank you to The Wildlife Trusts for coming up with the idea of 30 Days Wild, I did see a tweet earlier asking if anyone is up to 365 days wild - well yes I am although I won't be posting any of the next 335 days on here or numbering the days on instagram, but please do keep visiting my instagram account as I will still be sharing nature and wildlife pics on there, hopefully something new everyday.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

Day28 #30DaysWild - Buzzard

Today didn't quite go according to plan, and as a result I had to spend the whole of the morning inside, I consoled myself with the thought that I would get out this afternoon, but alas as I walked back to my car the rain started and it just did not stop, so by 5pm I was starting to worry that today might be the day that I have nothing to post, then to my delight a buzzard decided to perch on our telegraph pole. We have several buzzards around and I often watch them soar over our garden but as far as I am aware this is the first time a buzzard has actually landed in our garden, even if it was several feet up. The photo was taken through a very wet window with my phone If I had opened the door it would have flown off!

Friday, 24 June 2016

day 24 #30DaysWild in search of yellow

Today I looked for yellow to cheer up an otherwise bleak day, and happily found a hoverfly flying around our hypericum, despite the light drizzle! my #30DaysWild instagram phone photo today.

Sunday, 19 June 2016

Day 19 #30daysWild - a morning of moths

I woke up sneezing, and that continued throughout the day, so after helping with the moths this morning from our trapping overnight, I spent most of the rest of the day inside, apart from a little bit of gardening and making a little alteration to one of our bird feeders. Hopefully tomorrow after the rain the pollen will have calmed down again!
Here are some of our spectacular moths from this morning

Blood-vein

hawk-moths - Eyed, Poplars and Elephants

Eyed hawk-moth

Barred straw

Barred Straw

Wednesday, 8 June 2016

Day 8 - #30daysWild - recording a new species and more moths

Last night the moth trap was set up again in our garden for an hour or so. This morning it was emptied. moth traps don't just trap moths, we regularly get other insects including hornets, cockchafers and other beetles, but this was our first ladybird, and not just any ladybird but an orange ladybird, the first time we have seen one here!

It is a shame it was a mid week evening, with the number of moths we collected in that hour we would have had a bumper haul if it had been left up all night! here are a couple of gems from the hour a Lime Hawk Moth

and a Small Phoenix

Sunday, 5 June 2016

Day 5 - #30daysWild - borage, cloudless sky and nature walk around our local common

After a chilly start the sun soon broke through and then we were in cloudless Staffordshire for the rest of the day!

So a day of more gardening with the the company of a fearless robin, who kept appearing near to where I chose to dig! could this be the year I finally get a robin to feed from my hand? any tips on how I go about this would be very welcome!
One of my tasks in the garden was to thin out the borage, which sort of fitted into one of the random wild acts on the 30daysWild App, so today I selected 'sow borage for bees' and adapted it to thinned out borage for bees. I sowed my borage seeds during last years 30 Days Wild and we enjoyed a mass of them in late summer, which then self seeded for this year, so reluctantly today I pulled up several seedlings from the bed, but have still left at least 20 borage plants growing so again I am looking forward to a mass of blue flowers along with the bees and the holly blue butterfly that enjoyed them last year.

After an hour or so of gardening we decided to go for a walk around our neighbouring common, we kept an eye out for small pearl bordered fritillary butterflies, but alas there were none, we haven't seen any for a few years now, but I remain hopeful that they are still here it's just that we haven't spotted them!
We did however see our first Painted Lady of the year which just happened to fly onto the only guelder rose on the common as I was photographing the flowers.

We also spotted this stunning broad bodied chaser dragonfly

a Mother Shipton moth

and lots of these micro moths glyphipterix thrasonella

but the star of the day had to be the fantastic show of ragged robin, probably the best I have ever seen on the common

When we returned home my attention once more was focused on our friendly robin, I became a human bird table for an hour, sitting still on our lawn for an hour arms held out with two palms full of seed. Needless to say I had no takers but it was very relaxing!

Saturday, 4 June 2016

Day 4 - #30DaysWild - a day with moths - oh and a shieldbug!

Last night Mr S set up our moth trap in our garden, this morning when I woke at 6.45am Mr S was already up and out sorting the trap, this is not unusual, I just roll out of bed to take the photos, Mr S does the hard work of emptying, identifying and recording. I can now recognise quite a lot of the moths after four years of trapping though I have to say that small brown moths are and probably will always be just small brown moths to me! they have to have a bit of colour or character for me to take any interest! so here are the moths that caught my eye today! - there were quite a lot! ...