Seeds of success

Our native wildflowers are now seeding generously.

Their flowers are a vital food supply of protein-rich pollen and energy-giving nectar.

Our wildflowers are also essential food plants for caterpillars. Sometimes insects' larval stage can be very species specific. If we want to boost invertebrate numbers we should increase the quantity and variety of native species we offer..

If we want to play our small part in boosting biodiversity, we could do worse than 'spreading the love' and distributing wildflower seeds into places where they are absent.

Now is our opportunity to take out scissors or secateurs  and a bowl and begin the harvest.

In previous years we’ve had great success growing honeysuckle from ripe berries, dried on a kitchen towel then grown on as seedlings. All of the native honeysuckle on our six-acre site comes from this initial source. This is one of the plants now flowering in the hedge on the lane.

We’re in the process of collecting seeds of the following:

Ragged Robin and flag iris

Yellow rattle

Oxeye daisy

Cowslip

Red campion seed

Lesser knapweed and wild carrot will follow.

With luck, field scabious and meadowsweet will also provide seeds.

As well as collecting seed from our own garden, I am eagle-eyed on walks for wildflower seeds that can boost native flower diversity here, always carrying a small bag for this purpose.

Walking companions have suggested that this is slightly eccentric behaviour.

Moi?!

invertebrates began to wake up

Linda talks bumblebee surveying with visitors..

National Trust volunteers joined us yesterday as part of our National Garden Scheme (NGS)open gardens 2024.

The invertebrates began to wake up in celebration!

An early bumble bee worked 

the crocosmia 'Lucifer'.

A nursery-web spider waits by her silk canopy among the inula magnifica.

Elsewhere in the stand, a common carder bee busy on the wide daisy heads of the inula.

At last, a small tortoiseshell (on verbena Bodnantense).

Ants

Flying ants season is with us. Male ants emerging from their colonies to undertake nuptial flights with ant queens.

An eruption of biomass that should especially benefit

birds and bats.

I’m no ant expert but know we have four or five ant species here. Red or black or yellow. Lots of ‘em. Natures grafters. Giving everything for the team.

Last night we took an hours walk before dusk. I saw one swallow and that was fleetingly.

There should be an abundance of swallows, martins and swifts loading up on protein-rich flying insects.

Starlings and flycatchers should be in the wing. Green woodpeckers should be probing the warm ground and inserting long sticky tongues to draw out a welcome ant meal.

Is this what biodiversity crisis looks like?

skippers..

Two warm days!

Yesterday small skippers had emerged and they raced across our small meadow, as if joyous.

The red antennae-tips of small skipper

Today, pugnacious males are establishing territories and choosing vantage points like this birds-foot trefoil from which they can spot passing females and chase away insurgent males.

The Small Skipper almost exclusively uses Yorkshire-fog grass (Holcus lanatus), although several other grasses have been recorded as foodplants.

We also have the almost-identical Essex skipper here (black antennae tips rather than the red of small skipper). It is much less fussy. Its’ primary larval foodplant is Cock's-foot (Dactylis glomerata). Common Couch (Elytrigia repens), Creeping Soft-grass (Holcus mollis), False Brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum), Meadow Foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis), Timothy (Phleum pratense) and Tor-grass (Brachypodium rupestre) are also used.

(Source Butterfly Conservation).

Essex skippers arrive later than their red-tipped antennae cousins.

Locally there’s dingy skipper and also pretty little grizzled skipper. No garden records of these yet - but we live in hope!

When a day can’t get any better..

Sitting in our lounge after lunch.

A common lizard emerges from under the settee and sets off at speed across the carpet. 

Not an everyday occurance. Never seen a lizard in our fourteen years here. I did exclaim.

My Cornish pal used to catch them as a kid, only to lose them again when their tails came off! Everyone called them ‘voor legged emmets’..

Imagine such abundance.

Our lizards favourite game was hide and seek in the kitchen. Came back for a second go.

Another of our wildlife jewels under threat. From loss of connecting habitat and also from domestic cats…

She’s now relaxing on a rotting tree trunk by the pond..

Moths in July

The warmth of the day and a still evening awakened moths in our Cedar Walk.

Clouded silver moth

Moths have had a poor period. Very few on the wing along the lane and disturbingly quiet here.

That quietness must have impacted bats too. We have brown long-eared bats here. They hunt moths, not by sonar alone, but by using their acute hearing to catch moths on the wing. They can hear moths breathing. That is hearing as acute as that of a toddler whose parent crawls out of the bedroom, thinking the child has finally settled. Only to discover they haven’t.

Swallowtail and scalloped oak moths

But last night must have been good for the bats. 185 moths of 48 species is our best count since August 2022. Some full bat stomachs - I hope.

August thorn and wormwood pug were new species for us - the later only distinguishable from the currant pug by a dark band on the upper abdomen.

My personal favourite was the elegant swallowtail. Six of these beauties. Ghostly in flight.

Thirty one humble uncertain/rustics - our most numerous.

Collision..

The decision of the new government to remove the ban on the construction of land-based wind turbines is to be welcomed.

We must push to a greener, more sustainable future that reduces the output of greenhouse gases.

The effects of burning fossil fuels have been known for over a century and we are living the consequences as the speed of the climate crisis increases.

This clipping demonstrates the point:

The article suggests that the effects of burning fossil fuels may be hundreds of years away.

This graph showing the rise in atmospheric CO2 in my lifetime is sobering.

But still, climate-change deniers continue to make every attempt to block progress towards net zero.

One argument has been that wind turbines are harmful to birds.

Well, first of all, they can be. Thousands of birds are reported as colliding with the turning blades and dying. Each death is one too many.

But other man-made causes are more significant as this US chart shows:

Cats, windows and cars are hugely significant in bird deaths. The numbers are staggering.

Intensive farming including the use of agricultural fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides has decimated farmland birds and invertebrates. Once-common birds are now locally extinct.

The intensive rearing of animals - chickens in this case - led to the bird flu virus that has devastated sea bird colonies across the world.

Climate change poses a clear and existential threat to nature and to human life. 

This is the enemy. Not wind turbines.

high mortality

Our juvenile stock doves fledged last week.

Juvenile stock dove

There's high mortality amongst birds post-fledging.

Birds need to acquire skills of foraging, roosting safely and avoiding predators.

As a consequence they rapidly lose condition.

This young bird is 'one of our own' as we can see from its ring. Fledged, as I say, last week.

It is wandering around looking for food but finding little, sitting in exposed places, unaware of the dangers.

Ringed

Hope it avoids the sparrowhawk.

In the meantime, the production line rolls on as mum is on another clutch of eggs.

Stalwarts

A poor, poor year in the vegetable garden. 

It’s a crime against vegetable growing to have empty, unproductive beds at the height of the year.

Repeated showings have failed. 

Cucurbits are sulking. 

As are outdoor tomatoes. Someone needs to give our climbing beans a good shaking. They’re pathetic!

But good old stalwarts such as potatoes, Broad beans and calabrese are yielding well.

We await good weather!

More nutritionally dense than the commercially- produced versions by intensive methods.

Grown in no-dig soil and compost bringing greater benefits to our gut microbiome of contact with soil bacteria and mycology.

Organic so pesticide and herbicide free.

And so great in last nights stir-fry!!!

disease..

Our open garden season has come around again.

Last year, groups trudged around in the rain. A year of rain later, it looks as though it'll be the same.

Bedraggled birds in the garden.

Specially concerned that we have now had three birds with no head feathers. a great tit was the most distressing with awful swellings and bleeding.

I soak, wash, brush and disinfect the feeders regularly but amconcerned that they are vectors of disease.

I'v contacted the BTO for advice.

corker ..

Juvenile robin, just emerging into adult plumage.

Little corker.

Juveniles

Heavy rain overnight has continued.

Still the juvenile blue and great tits continue to queue at the feeders, filling up on ground peanuts and sunflower hearts.

Juvenile robin and greenfinch too.

Inbetween filling up, young blue tits explore the window cills.

Scabious

Field scabious now flowering in the meadow.

Beautiful mauve pink. Big landing platforms for insects.

It will naturally seed and increase.

To speed the process, seedlings have been planted in the orchard and meadow.

Beginning to buzz ..

A warm day for our NGS afternoon for the National Trust volunteers.

And, at last, invertebrates were active!

An early bumblebee worker was busy on the Crocosmia 'Lucifer'.

A common carder bee was working the plates of the inula magnifica flower heads.

And an impressive nursery-web spider sat on guard her canopied web, waiting for visitors among the same stand of inula magnifica ...

Siskin

The last Notts Birders report we have is for 2020. It says that there were no proven breeding records of siskin in the county.

Male adult siskins are grass green little chaps sporting natty black caps. Perhaps unsurprising that no young have been noted as they live in the tops of conifer trees. Frequently heard here, they don’t usually deign to visit the garden feeders until January when their numbers are swollen by continental migrants.

Today a single juvenile, still in his striped pyjamas, with his dad on the garden feeders today.

We live in an area of deciduous woodland but have big coniferous trees in the garden. 

We’ve claimed him as a garden breeder!