An autumn distraction

Tags

bindweed, bryony, Candide app, CNN, convolvulus, Covid, Covid-19, cow parsnip, crabapple, Dog rose, field maple, Glastonbury Tor, hedge woudwort, Hogweed, hornbeam, jackdaw, longtailed tit, magpie, Millfield Prep, Priority postbox, sheep, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Teasel, US presidential election

It was Stressful Wednesday, and I had been obsessing with the rolling news half the night (less than four hours’ sleep) and all day until lunchtime. It was gorgeous outside, and I hadn’t done my little there-and-back walk from my house for a very long time. I wondered if it was possible to distract myself for an hour or so.

It was. I can honestly say that I did not give the US presidential election a single thought all the time I was out.

Down to the end of my road,

through a small passageway to my left, up the lane to the main road where the prep school is situated, and back again. Views and details.

There were children, parents and a dog in the playground, to the left of this view.

Dog rose hips in among the ?privet.

Hogweed aka cow parsnip

I spent a few minutes trying to capture hedge reflections in the puddles at the side of the road. This is the only vaguely successful image.

So I raised my eyes to the lane ahead, and thought that they’d soon be flailing the hedges.

In theory there is a right of way up to Glastonbury Tor from this stile, but I’ve never seen anyone take it.

I’m always intrigued by this old tree. Has someone just put an old crate in its hollow trunk for stability, or has it some more interesting purpose? Sadly two other, much younger, trees have succumbed to the recent winds. And there is an apple trapped in the wire netting round the nearest tree!

Mixed feelings about convolvulus/bindweed, but here it’s pretty

Jackdaw in crabapple

Hooray. When last I passed by here, this right of way was completely overgrown and impassable. To be taken another time.

To my untutored eye none of the ash trees on this walk has yet been affected by ash die-back, but it’s a very serious threat in Somerset. The Somerset Wildlife Trust has asked people not even to visit four of its reserves in the east of the county, and at its online AGM this morning the CEO said that she thought that 90% of its woodland would be affected within 10 years.

Field maple supporting bryony fruit

Yup, ‘they’ have started trimming the hedges.

Still, it does mean that views like this are revealed.

An unprepossessing gate, softened by teasel.

Magpie in ash tree

I zoomed in to look at the top of the Tor. Quite a lot of people (and there were more on its sides).

Will the ponies be in the field?

No.

I tried to catch a long-tailed tit on these twigs, but it flew off. But I thought I would include the picture as a sort of abstract – and found that, top left, I had indeed captured the long tail and a wing.

Good to see cars in the staff car park of the school,

and even better to hear the cries of small children playing, not, as they were in the spring and early summer, absent during this lockdown.

Will the Open Event happen?

Victorian postbox in the wall of the school at the junction with the main road. I wondered what a Priority postbox was, and found once I was home that it’s related to Covid testing – more info here.

Time to turn round.

The signs are presumably channelling parents as part of Covid-safe measures.

From now on, I was facing the low autumn sun.

Glastonbury Tor not zoomed. There are little human dots up there.

The sun highlights a flooded field – I am surprised there are not more, given the rainfall we have had recently – and some telephone wires.

I was intrigued by this very new fencing on either side of this track, which on first glance appeared to be creating two paths. A closer look made me realise that in fact it was protecting new hedging. I waited for the sheep to be ushered into the right-hand field, and for the ‘shepherd’ to come back to his van, to my left. From him I learned that in fact this was his project. Living in town, he owned nine acres, and was putting native hedging around the three fields, for the benefit of wildlife. 600 metres so far. Brilliant!

I stood and listened to these sheep tearing at the grass – quite soporific.

According to my Candide app, this is Hedge woundwort.

Common dogwood

It’s only 3pm, but shadows are long at this time of year.

For some reason, a toffee apple came to my mind as I looked at this tree.

I’m back at the bottom of my road again.

And the hornbeam in my own garden’s not bad!

I started this post early on Saturday afternoon. I broke off about three pictures ago to watch CNN, and caught the moment the result was announced. Stressful Wednesday was worth it!

Wildlife in the garden, part 3

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wildlife in the garden, part 1

Tags

backswimmer, badger, borage, crabapple, damselflies, gatekeeper, green woodpecker, holly blue, long-tailed tit, peacock butterfly, starling, tadpoles, tiger moth, wildlife garden

Preparing to depart for a wildlife trip to the wetlands of Brazil, the Pantanal, at the end of the week, I thought I would do a photoblog entry about the wildlife in my own garden since the beginning of the year.  Except that it turns out that it is going to have to be three days’ worth of entries.  It also turns out that I only got down to a serious photographic record in August, before then being very haphazard.

My bird seed disappears very rapidly in the winter, the most numerous commensals being chaffinches, goldfinches and above all starlings.

Starlings congregating in the hornbeam in January

They roost at night with millions of others, after spectacular murmurations if the conditions are right, in the reedbeds of the Somerset Levels – and at dawn scatter to the gardens and fields surrounding for miles around.  There can be as many as 30 or 40 in this tree and on the ground at one time. In summer though, I can go for weeks without seeing a single one.

Robins – not necessarily the same ones, since they also migrate to a certain extent – are here year round.

Enjoying the February sun

In the same month, the frogs start getting amorous. Here are a couple in amplexus in my pond, and the results of their amours.

You can just see the female

The next six pictures were taken in March.

Goldfinches

Tadpoles stay close together immediately after hatching, eating the remains of their glassy first homes

Small tortoiseshell butterfly on Lesser celandine

(Common?) wasp on Euphorbia characias

Until I saw this I did not realise that backswimmers (a.k.a., but not, water boatmen) could exist outside water. But I now know they can also fly.

April sees the arrival of many bees.  Here is a solitary (that is, not living in a community) bee.

I always feel guilty that the nail-holes in this summerhouse will not provide the sort of nests that they want, and that the bees waste their time trying.  I really will buy or make a bee house for them soon.

When I stand under my crab-apple tree in blossom-time, the humming of, mainly, honeybees is almost deafening.  Butterflies also enjoy the nectar.

Peacock butterfly

Here is a damselfly (wings closed behind it and much smaller than dragonfly) on a field maple.

Just one of many clumps of primroses

Signs of bluebells

Holly blue butterfly on, I think, pear blossom

Craneflies are just one of the many kinds of insects which love the long grass, (pretentiously called my meadow)

Lady’s smock, a.k.a. cuckoo flower, which arrived spontaneously when I started letting the meadow grow. (It had not been very cared for before.)

Crabapple tree in full glory, thought to be part of an ancient hedge, like the hornbeam

We’re into May now. Just one picture. I don’t know what this insect is, but it’s rather handsome in my view.

June

 I do know that this is definitely an adult male blackbird

Badgers use my garden most of the year, and I have seen, and been able to stand among – badgers’ sight is notoriously poor – as many as eight of them, including young, foraging for insects in, or rather within, the turf. They emerge from their setts as it is getting, or it has become, thoroughly dark.  However in the long days of June they are forced to come out while there is still a little daylight, and I was thrilled to get this picture from my kitchen window around 9 pm one evening.

Last year I saw – and have seen elsewhere this year – Jersey tiger moths.  In June I was delighted to see in my own garden Scarlet tiger moths, so-called for obvious reasons.

 

 

 

Gatekeeper butterfly

Small white butterfly on Verbena bonariensis

Great spotted woodpeckers are not unusual in my garden, but I’d never seen a green woodpecker here before. This juvenile by loud screeching was determined to let me know it was there, and I was able to take this photo just by swinging round at my desk. Sadly I was not able to get a picture of the never-before-seen Treecreeper the following day.

Bumblebee on lavender

Only the buddleia in this picture is in my garden. These sparrows wait in a neighbour’s garden taking their turn to raid my feeders. There are more than 30 of them in this picture.

Once the borage is out, honeybees have a clear preference for its flowers, while the bumblebees stay with the lavender.

I love it when long-tailed tits flit through the garden.

We’ve arrived at August.  More pictures from that month next time.