Sunday July 31

Since my last post the weather has remained largely warm. This has  resulted in plenty of insect activity in the garden.

The huge lavender outside our kitchen window is at last proving a great draw for the local bees, and I have been driven to distraction trying to photograph and identify them. They mostly seem to be Buff-tailed Bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, and I have seen an obvious queen, and a lot of much less obvious workers. In fact it appears to be almost impossible to distinguish the workers of this species from White-tailed Bumblebees, Bombus lucorum, as they both show a largely white "tail", actually the abdomen.

Buff-tailed Bumblebee - queen

Buff-tailed Bumblebee - worker

Another common bumblebee which visits the lavender in good numbers is the Common Carder Bee Bombus pascuorum.

Common Carder Bee

This afternoon, however, I had a bumblebee tick. It's just a pity that its identification is rather tricky. What I do know is that it was a cuckoo bee, and what I think, because it was quite big, is that it is a parasite of the Buff-tailed Bumblebee, a species called Vestal Cuckoo Bee, Bombus vestalis. 

Vestal Cuckoo Bee

In contrast to the bees, it remains pretty hopeless for butterflies and moths. A handful of Gatekeepers, and Large Whites have visited, and I had a brief view of a Holly Blue. The only moth to get through the bathroom window was a micro, which I eventually concluded was a Dark Fruit-tree Tortrix Pandemis heparana.

Dark Fruit-tree Tortrix

Finally, yesterday morning I spotted a cranefly scooting along the kitchen floor. I potted it and took it outside for release and a mugshot. What a stonking beast it turned out to be. All Craneflies are not the same.

Nephrotoma flavipalpis

It doesn't seem to have an English name, and as I am not a latin scholar I can only propose that it be called Yellow-headed Cranefly. Not that anyone's listening.

Sunday July 24

Following my last post the weather has remained warm, and I'm pleased to say that the insects have responded accordingly.

To begin with, the Buddleia and Lavender in the garden are starting to attract bumblebees and butterflies.

Buff-tailed Bumblebee - queen

Red-tailed Bumblebee - worker

The butterflies have included Red Admiral, Large White, and Gatekeeper. There remains a worrying complete absence of Peacocks though.

Gatekeeper in an unfamiliar pose

After dark the bathroom finally played host to some macro-moths last night. The Common Emerald and Fanfoot which I caught were both moths I had seen before, but were welcome nonetheless.

Common Emerald

Fanfoot

I also saw a Silver Y fluttering on the lavender after dark three nights ago, but it declined to appear in the bathroom.

Finally, a somewhat less wild beast.

Fred

We are currently giving my sister's tortoise its annual summer holiday. It mainly stays in the garden, but has learnt how to climb the back step if we are silly enough to leave the back door open...and we are definitely silly enough to do that.

Fred is over 50 years old (a family heirloom) and was discovered to be a she many years ago, but the name Fred has been retained. It's not house-trained, but has not disgraced itself yet this summer.

Thursday July 21

The last few days have been intolerably hot, and especially warm at night.

In previous years this would have meant an opportunity to catch and identify moths in our bathroom. So since last Friday night I have been expecting something impressive to turn up.

Day 1: A Cranefly - either Tipula oleracea or Tipula palidosa. I know absolutely nothing about Craneflies so the insect was photographed in a pot the following morning before research told me it was a male (which was bad news because it meant the only way to identify it was to count the segments in the antennae). The photo wasn't sharp enough.

Day 2: A small moth I had seen before, but forgotten how to identify. It escaped the following morning, but my poorly focussed shot told me it was a Light Brown Apple Moth. It is described as an adventive Australian moth first discovered in Cornwall in 1936.

Day 3: Slightly more hopeful, but still just micro-moths.

Carcina quercana 

 Codling Moth - Cydia pomonella 

These are both common moths, the latter being the first I have identified, but not too surprising as we have a ruddy great apple tree in the garden.

The thing that concerns us is the apparent shortage of bumblebees and butterflies which are normally carpeting our Lavender and Buddleia at this time of the year.

Hopefully things will soon pick up.

Saturday July 16

At this time of the year our garden is often full of birds as young birds fledge.

However, hardly any of them actually breed on the premises. The only ones to do so successfully are the House Sparrows. I think there are two pairs breeding under the eaves of our roof, and I am steadfastly refusing any suggestion that the paint-peeling wooden facia be replaced by the shiny plastic surrounds preferred by the majority of our neighbours.

Juvenile House Sparrow

This summer we had a second species breed in the garden. A pair of Robins nested in a wicker container I had put into a bush several years ago with the intention of creating a winter roosting site for Wrens. The Robin successfully hatched their eggs, and had been feeding chicks for about a week when disaster struck and the nest was raided, possibly by a cat, early one morning.

The Robin before calamity struck

In the last few days we have been seeing other juvenile birds in the garden, assumed to have fledged from nearby gardens.

Juvenile Blackbird

Juvenile Dunnock

These juveniles always look subtly different from their parents and can catch out unwary observers.

Tuesday July 12

As I have mostly been at work since the weekend, very little wildlife watching has been going on.

The only notable bird was a Green Woodpecker which I heard from the bedroom window on Monday morning. This species always seems to appear in late summer, perhaps to take advantage of the ant harvest. Anyway, this particular bird failed to show itself.

That leaves me with two insects to talk about, both found in the house. Last night I caught one of those extremely annoying little moths which basically live in the house. I believe it to be the Brown House Moth, Hofmannophila pseudospretella.

Whatever it is, I liberated it in the garden in the morning, but have a feeling it would have been much happier in the house.

Hardly had I dealt with one insect, when a second found its way into a pot of cherry tomatoes I pulled from a cupboard. This time the beast in question was clearly an Earwig.

I gave it the same pot treatment, photographing it in the pot because I knew it would scuttle off as soon as I gave it its liberty...which it did.

Typical of insects, I then found there are several species of Earwig to consider. However, leaving it in the pot for the photograph did have one unexpected advantage, which is that the two commonest species are the Common Earwig and the Lesser Earwig. The pot has grid lines, so I am able to accurately measure the Earwig and thus confirm it as a Common Earwig.

Friday July 8

A few minutes in the garden, using the excuse of watering plants, allowed me time to try to photograph one of the handful of Swifts which still fly over head at this time of the year.

I also fished a tiny insect out of the bird bath and photographed that.

Common Froghopper

This little creature is responsible for the cuckoo spit which adorns our lavender. It no doubt ended up in the bird bath after taking a hop too far.

Later on I chucked some chicken fat onto the roof of the shed. Half an hour later two Lesser Black-backed Gulls were gobbling it up.

Thursday July 7

As far as insects are concerned I have a somewhat patchy knowledge.

I am ok at identifying butterflies and dragonflies, having taken an interest in them at least 15 years ago, but when it comes to everything else I very much rely on references in books and photographs to try to work out what I am looking at.

I am also squeamish about killing things just to identify them, which leads to a few partial identifications such as the Copper or Svensson's Copper Underwing featured in the moth page.

So all I can say about the moth and other beasts pages are that I have done my best and believe the identifications to be correct, but am always open to guidance if anyone who manages to find this blog thinks I may have made a mistake.

A butterfly page and a moth page have now been added, and so far are completely based on creatures seen in the garden or which have accidentally flown into the bathroom at night.

Tuesday July 5

I am currently in the process of creating pages for this blog.

My main area of interest has always been birds so I have created a photo-list of 20 species photographed in or from our garden over the last couple of years, and will be adding to it. Any birds seen away from the garden will be labelled with the location.

Of course I have seen a lot more than 20 species from the garden over the last 12 years, and the garden list currently stands at 73 species. Unfortunately I have only had a camera since 2012 so many of these are recorded only in my memory and on paper.

A further distinction can be made between birds seen actually in, as opposed to from the garden. The best birds seen in the garden were a Waxwing one March a few years ago, and a Whitethroat in May 2013.

Birds seen or heard flying over or perching in nearby trees include Hawfinch in Jan 2006, Tree Pipit in Aug 2004, and singles of Peregrine, Hobby, Snipe, Golden Plover, Crossbill, Lesser Whitethroat, and Common Tern.

Moving out of the garden I have recorded Garden Warbler in a hedge between us and the paper shop, and most impressively a singing Wood Warbler in a patch of woodland on the Winyates Green side of the main road.

The only notable bird I can recall from Isley Alders was a singing Grasshopper Warbler one spring, and I twitched that.

Arrow Valley Lake should have brought me more than a single Kittiwake and a few commonish ducks, aside from the Eider mentioned in the last post. Perhaps I should start going there more often.

I think there is still plenty of potential for more discoveries.

Monday July 4

Well here we go again. A new blog.

This time I am concentrating on the few square miles around where I actually live. This most obviously begins with our garden (a few square yards), and the walk to the paper shop. So exciting!

Our house is a small modern detached property in a 1970's estate of "little boxes" very typical of new towns like Redditch. It sounds pretty dull, but I am intending to demonstrate that wildlife occurs everywhere, and that you just have to look.

The back garden

The front garden

We moved to Redditch twelve years ago, and our corner never fails to impress us with its greenness. Vestigial hedgerows, and even strips of woodland abound. Even better, a few hundred yards up the road is a Worcestershire Trust Reserve called Isley Alders. Not that I ever go there. But more fool me, because it is apparently an example of a lowland acid bog with an unusual flora, and maybe fauna.

Another possibility, a short car journey away, is Arrow Valley Lake. This is basically a municipal park with a rather linear lake in the middle of it. Good for Great Crested Grebes and the like. I did visit this pretty regularly for six months a few winters ago, until I got bored of nodding to the same dog-walkers every morning.

Many years ago I twitched a Common Eider there one May, proof if you need it that anything can turn up anywhere.

I am writing this blog as though someone is likely to read it, but to tell you the truth the only reader may be me. In which case I may well whinge about stuff, like over officious gamekeepers at my other patch, the destruction of the countryside, politics, football, anything really.

To be continued...