Tags
ants, badger, crabapple, dragonflies, ovipositor, Spiders, urban fox, wagtail, water lily
Some things old and some things new for this final post in the series. Here’s a small white butterfly on lavender. Insects just love lavender. I’m going ensure they have more next year.
A grasshopper on ground that ants have churned up a bit.
I think I can understand those who don’t like spiders, but for me they and their webs are beautiful…
This is a minuscule verbascum, and the fly is about 8 mm long.
Not a Gatekeeper on the Verbena, but a Meadow brown butterfly
It’s the spider season – or it’s the season when we notice them.
I confess that this was not taken in my garden, but from the window of my friend, Mary’s, house in inner London. This fox was in her neighbour’s back garden. I have seen cubs there too, but not on this occasion of a visit to her in late August.
Wagtails seem to prefer the roadway itself usually, where they seem to be able to find the tiny insects that nourish them. But this one came on to my front lawn.
Goldfinch, great tit, and I think another goldfinch and a sparrow. Even more difficult to get a decent picture on this furthest feeder in the shade of the summer leaves.
Blue tit and chaffinch
Holly blue butterfly. Some butterflies settle with wings open, and some don’t…
Papa (Mama?) wagtail brought juvenile this time.
I thought I was taking a photo of a fly about 10 mm long on this Evening primrose flower. Only on seeing the result on the screen did I realise that there was also an almost invisibly small further creature in the image.
Badgers leave their mark where they pass regularly. The cats also choose to use their path under the crab-apple.
Badgers dig for cockchafer larvae and other delights. Even if I wanted a perfect lawn, it would be impossible here.
Views on ants are divided, but my wildlife friends say that they are great for breaking up the soil, distributing nutrients and bringing fertilising elements to the garden. (Here is an enthusiastic website.) My ‘meadow’ has many anthills, and here is the most impressive. It’s about 8 inches high.
I accidentally disturbed some ants recently, and watched as they hurried to save the eggs:
Penultimate spider:
I think this is a harmless solitary wasp, and that that fearful looking instrument at its rear is an ovipositor.
The water lily is sadly going to have to go next month. It has totally taken over the pond, depriving it of light and oxygen. The pond snails will have to find somehere else to perch when they want to take the air,
as will the fly when it wants to drink.
When the sun was out a few days ago, there were at last half a dozen dragonflies darting around at just above head height, presumably snatching minute insects. I actually saw one take quite a sizeable midge. Rarely do they settle, but when they do, they don’t seem to be too worried about the presence of a human nearby.
Sorry, this is the penultimate spider:
Early evening, the sunlight catches the midges near the hornbeam – when there’s any sun. This is my best effort, from indoors, to capture them digitally. I’ll hope to do better next year, perhaps from outside.
The sparrows don’t only line up in my neighbour’s garden, but in mine as well.
How’s this for a beauty on my garden rubbish?
Finally, this is how my crab-apple, flowering so gloriously in April, looks now, in a rare moment of sunshine.
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