30 Days Wild – Day 18 – Flaming June

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They say be careful what you wish for – last week I was wishing the wind would drop and it would get warmer. Well it’s certainly flaming June now and I’m regretting last week’s wishes, as we swelter here in Malvern! It’s Day 18 of 30 Days Wild and it’s so hot it’s hard to find the energy to do anything. I haven’t ventured further than the garden, so today’s post is pretty much restricted to what is going on there. All I really managed was a gentle bit of garden bird watching, but there are worse ways to spend your day!

We have assorted feeders all over the garden, but I was restricted to photographing those I could see from the shade! I think perhaps it was too hot even for the birds as not that many showed themselves, despite me putting out several bowls of water. I even poured a load of water into the wheelbarrow to give them an impromptu pond (our other pond being more silt than water).

The old faithfuls the jackdaws did of course appear when I put out some suet shreds. They are always first down to the bird table – they must have good eyesight to spot me putting out food from wherever they are. I know they get a bit of a bad press, but they are beautiful birds really.

Next down to the table was this blackbird – more cautious than the jackdaws.

The only other birds I saw in abundance while I watched were the sparrows. They were everywhere, but too nervy to get a good photo. I kept seeing adults feeding fledglings, it looks as if it’s been a good year for sparrow babies in our garden at least. I never seemed to be able to get a clear shot though and in the end the best I managed was this blurry one – from a distance and through our grubby patio doors, so not ideal.

Of course you can put out all the intentional bird food you like, but sometimes the birds are just canny enough to help themselves to things you don’t want. This morning a Great Tit found the box full of egg trays that I’d put the moths in from last night’s trap, ready for them to fly off when it gets dark. He must have thought Christmas had come early until I moved it inside the boxes inside the old hedgehog hutch. Even then he managed to squeeze through the bars to get more until I blocked it up. Hard to be cross though, as he needs to feed his family too.

So not my most productive wildlife day, but very enjoyable all the same.

 

30 Days Wild – Day 17 – Blue is the Colour!

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It’s Day 17 of 30 Days Wild and with blue skies above we went in search of the Large Blue Butterfly. The Large Blue is probably Britain’s rarest butterfly. It actually went extinct here in the 1970s, but thanks to great efforts by conservation bodies, it was reintroduced to a few sites in 1984. One of these sites is Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire and that’s where we headed today. Butterfly Conservation’s Gloucestershire Branch had an organised walk on and very kindly let us tag along.

Large Blues have a really intriguing life cycle. The eggs are laid on wild thyme or marjoram. The tiny caterpillars hatch and secret a substance that attracts a particular species of red ant. The ants carry them to their nests, where the caterpillars feed on the ant grubs. Eventually the new adults emerge and have to crawl out of the ants’ nests before they can open their wings!

Daneway Banks consists of limestone grassland that is carefully managed by the Wildlife Trusts, to support the Large Blue butterfly, which of course has the side effect of supporting lots of other wildlife too. It is up a steep bank and looked stunning today in the sunshine, with wildflowers and butterflies galore!

Apart from the chatter of excited would-be Large Blue spotters, the predominant sound for me was the chirruping of grasshoppers. There must be hundreds there judging by the noise, which I love – it is one of the true sounds of summer for me.

So two whole posses of us set off in search of the Large Blue. There is quite a camaraderie about going out with a bunch of people all interested in seeing the same thing! Over the day we saw about 13 species in total, but initially the Large Blue remained elusive. But there were other blues to tempt our fancy. There were several Common Blues and small Blues were also reasonably common, although very difficult to get a decent shot of – the photo below was the best I managed.

While we searched for our elusive target we saw plenty of beautiful orchids, which at least don’t fly off! Most were these ones (possibly Common Spotted Orchids).

There were a few of these pretty purple ones, which I think may be Pyramidal Orchids?

There was also a white orchid – I don’t know if this is a different species, or just a colour variation of the Pyramidal one.

Prize of the day went to this Bee Orchid though – absolutely gorgeous and unlike any we’d seen before.

 

But back to the butterflies – Meadow Browns & Marbled Whites were present in abundance, but none would pose for a photo. This Ringlet and Small Heath were more agreeable to it, although still a bit flighty.

We eventually spotted a blue butterfly that looked larger than the rest. It flew off towards another enthusiast who was much more knowledgeable than us and confirmed it was indeed a Large Blue. We set off after it, joined by others as we hurried, only to lose it over a grassy bank. But at least we’d seen one, so that was progress!

Eventually we saw Andy – the group leader – waving us over. Unbelievably a mating pair of Large Blues had been found!  I hurried over to join the excited throng. None of us wanted to get too close to disturb the loved up pair, but we did manage to take some photos at least. So here are our Large Blues.

We saw a couple more Large Blues over the next hour, but despite our spirited pursuits, none stopped long enough to be photographed. So unfortunately we never got a shot of one with its wings open  – perhaps that’s something for next time.

I’d say seeing the Large Blues was the perfect end to the trip, but actually the cold drink in the very nice pub (Daneway Inn), finished off a boiling hot day just perfectly too.

So that’s the 42nd species of butterfly and one of the most interesting ones to boot! Huge thanks to Butterfly Conservation Gloucestershire for letting us midlanders tag along. I hadn’t really dared hope that I’d ever see a Large Blue, but to see a mating pair is simply amazing. Fingers crossed it was a successful union and that Daneway Banks is blessed with many more generations of blues to come!

 

30 Days Wild – Day 16 – Plant Pots for Pollinators

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It’s Day 16 of 30 Days Wild and this evening I’ve been Planting a Pot for Pollinators. This isn’t just me randomly planting up a pot with more flowers, but part of a nationwide scheme to encourage people to do their bit for pollinating bees, hoverflies and butterflies etc.

It’s being organised by the Butterfly Conservation Society – for more information go to: http://www.plantpotsforpollinators.org The aim is simple – to get as many people as possible to plant up at least one pot in their garden with flowers that are good for our insect pollinators.

If you go to their website you can download instructions, but basically all you need is a big pot, some peat-free compost and some flowers. There’s a list of 6 suggestions – calendula, catmint, cosmos, French marigolds, Shasta daisies and dahlias (but only the single flowered varieties as these have pollen that is easy for the bees to get at).  You can of course choose others, provided they are good for pollinators.

Of the 6, I bought, Cosmos (left), French marigolds and a Dahlia – all of which had bees on in the garden centre when I bought them – a good sign! I also supplemented these with some wildflower plants that I’d had sitting waiting to plant on for a while – Verbena bonariensis, Anthemis and Achillea.

 

It only took 5 minutes to fill the pot with compost and stick the 6 plants in. With hindsight I could probably have squeezed a couple more in and I may well do so at the weekend. Even if I don’t buy more, hopefully those that are there will bush out to fill the pot up a bit more. Hopefully the mix of different colours and shapes will attract a variety of pollinating insects.

So here is the (sort of) finished article, nothing fancy, but hopefully the bees will appreciate it. Ideally I would have liked to include some photos of insects actually on the pot, but since I did this after work, it was getting a bit late and there was not much buzzing about. Assuming I get something on them, I will add more photos when I can.

Having planted a pot, the website encourages you to plot your pot on their map. Butterfly Conservation hope to cover the UK in pots for pollinators. So being a good citizen scientist, I plotted my pot on the map. It is reassuring to see that ours isn’t the only one in Worcestershire!

Of course our garden being a weedfilled paradise for insects, you could argue that it didn’t really need another pot of flowers for pollinators. But you can never have too many, so why not? And by participating in a scheme like this, we are hopefully helping to spread the good word.

30 Days Wild – Day 15 – Mother’s Day

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It’s Day 15 of 30 Days Wild and once again my plans for today’s theme took an unexpected turn. I had intended to do a review of the wildlife picked up on my trail cam that I’d left in my Dad’s garden overnight. His garden is packed with wildlife, but typically none of it chose to walk in front of the trail camera in the last 24 hours. However yesterday at Dad’s I’d found a little sketching notebook belonging to my Mum. One of the Random Acts of Wildness suggestions for 30 Days Wild is to “Unleash Your Inner Artist”. Well I’m not sure I’ve got an inner artist, but my Mum certainly had. I’d been thinking about her paintings on Day 12 of 30 Days Wild, when I’d taken a photo of a view with flowers in front which reminded me of her.  Then to cap it all I watched Springwatch tonight which had a couple of features from the Scilly Isles. My parents loved the Scillies and Mum painted a lot there. So today’s Act was reconnecting me with my Mum’s paintings and the Scilly Isles and through them with my mother herself.

The notebook is full of little sketches and watercolours of flowers. They are all just simple little pictures, intended I presume to jog her memory for the details when she later wanted to paint full paintings. But to me they are beautiful in their own right.

There is more to so many of them though than just a flat picture of a flower. She drew or painted them from different angles, front and back, to get the feel for the whole plant not just the obvious view.

She painted them in full flower in bud, clearly realising that in any natural group of flowers, they don’t all open at the same time.

Although not a great gardener, she clearly knew the names of a lot of the plants. The artist in her noted the subtle colour differences.

Mum made notes about the arrangements of the leaves around the stems and how they changed with age, which way they faced and how the group together might form a mound.

So many of them are dated, it looks like she was using this notebook in the early 1990s. Sometimes places were named too; my parents always went to the Scilly Isles in May, so even if it doesn’t always say, I can guess some of those dated May were painted there.

This is one of my favourite completed paintings – not taken from the notebook, but hanging on my wall. It is the view from Bryher looking across the water to Tresco. It may only look like a simple watercolour, but if you’ve ever been to the Isles of Scilly I reckon it would conjure up the view perfectly.

I know I am biased but I think Mum was rather good. Looking through her notebook and seeing not only her sketches, but her familiar handwriting and thinking of her and Dad on the Scilly Isles together was quite emotional.

It struck me looking through Mum’s notebook, that she had made these little sketches as an artist, but they could equally have been done by a botanist. Her eye for the details of the plant and the notes she made would have been perfectly at home in a naturalist’s notebook. As a child I was always interested in animals and nature and Mum was always very encouraging; but what hadn’t occurred to me until tonight was that I didn’t just get supported by her, maybe I got it all from her in the first place? So tonight’s post is for you Mum – thank you for everything. xxx

30 Days Wild – Day 14 – Stocks and Stones

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It’s Day 14 of 30 Days Wild and being a Wednesday, meant that I took my Dad out for a pub lunch. Finally we had a sunny, wind-free June day, which meant we could sit outside to enjoy our lunch alfresco.  For some reason this year’s 30 Days Wild has involved nearly as much historical history as natural history and today was no exception.

 

Our pub du jour was the delightful Pandy Inn in Dorstone, Herefordshire, not far from Hay on Wye. The Pandy Inn is reputedly one of the oldest pubs in Herefordshire and the rose filled garden was a very pleasant place to have our lunch. Food always tastes better outside and my salt & pepper squid went down a treat! No idea why the pub had these medieval looking stocks, don’t know if they were old or replicas, but they made for an unusual garden feature!

After lunch we headed from possibly the oldest pub to possibly the oldest man-made structure in Herefordshire – Arthur’s Stone. Arthur’s Stone is a Neolithic tomb, dating from between 3700 and 2700BC. It is perched on top of a nearby hill and mythology has connected it to Arthur since about the 13th century.

The tomb consists of an elongated mound with several large stones visible on top. The largest stone capping it all, is estimated to weigh about 25 tonnes!

The stones themselves are impressive enough, but the view is absolutely stunning. I could have done with one of those maps you get that tells you the names of all the hills you can see from a given vantage point. But I think we were looking across to the Black Mountains in the Brecon Beacons.

I tried to do one of my shaky video clips to give an idea of the scope of the view:

This would have been a fantastic place for a picnic (had we not already stuffed ourselves at the pub!). It was very peaceful, the loudest thing we heard were the sheep bleating. Only one other car passed while we were there and it really felt like there was no-one else for miles around. Perhaps people have been picnicking here for centuries? The stones themselves showed signs of visitors, with bits of graffiti scratched into them. Some of the graffiti looked very old as the lichens had grown over and obscured the names. Nice to think of people enjoying the view hundreds of years ago – it would have looked just the same!

These stones seem to have been associated with all sorts of historical figures besides Arthur (his particular legend here says he slew a giant). A pair of knights were said to have had a duel here during the War of the Roses. King Charles (the first presumably) was said to have gathered his troops for battle here and even dined on the stone! But the story I like best is that when writing about Narnia, CS Lewis used Arthur’s Stone as the inspiration for the stone table that Aslan was sacrificed on. I loved those Narnia books as a child, so I really hope that one is true!

So I don’t know if looking at a bunch of old rocks counts as going wild, but we were out and about enjoying the fresh air and the countryside, so that will do for me! There are not many historical sites you can go to that feel as remote as this, untroubled by other visitors. Nor are there many that feel as much a part of the landscape – most have houses, or carparks and visitor centres near, which can detract from the natural surroundings. Arthur’s Stone just had a simple wooden fence and almost didn’t feel like a man-made structure at all. Just part of the Herefordshire countryside emerging from the hillside of its own accord perhaps!

 

30 Days Wild – Day 13 – Harvest Time

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It’s Day 13 of 30 Days Wild and I really don’t know where the time has gone today! I haven’t ended up doing any of the things I intended to, but have done a few things on the spur of the moment instead. Nothing monumental, just a quiet, pottering kind of day.

It started off well (albeit at 04:30 in the morning) when I found a Ghost Moth in the trap. I’ve wanted to find one of these for ages, especially after I saw a couple on a Wildlife Trust “moth breakfast” last year. This is also one of the few species where I can say with confidence that I’ve caught a female one. The females are yellow like this and the males are a more ghost like white (although they both have the same Trump-like yellow wig on the head!).

After that the day seemed to slow down a bit, partly due to a couple of trips to the vet with our elderly diabetic cat Bert (all well, just routine check up).  Hanging around waiting to pick Bert up again gave me time to finally get round to starting the elderflower champagne, with the now slightly elderly elderflower heads I’d picked last week. Many thanks to Christine Lucas for her recipe (https://redpanda08.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/30-days-wild-2017-week-1/) which I’ve tweeked only slightly because we happened to have an orange in the fridge! Fingers crossed it produces something resembling the stuff I remember from childhood.

Feeling like I was on a roll, I checked the fridge to see what else needed using up. We’ve got a glut of strawberries & raspberries from the allotment at the moment and there’s only so many bowls of them you can eat just straight. So in a rare fit of baking enthusiasm (although this was actually a no-bake recipe) I made a strawberry cheesecake. There’s something really satisfying about making something with fruit you’ve not only picked but grown yourself! Although by the end of the summer when we’ve had strawberries every night, I might not be quite so enthusiastic about them!

Once Bert was safely back home, I headed down the allotment to do a bit of the never ending weeding. Things are really coming along down on the lottie now. Latest addition were these pak choi – I seem to be incapable of going into a garden centre (or in this case a certain well known DIY store) without coming out with more vegetable seedlings – hence the tub of these.

We’ve also got a couple of tubs of mixed salad leaves, grown from seed and doing remarkably well. No idea what any of it is, but there’s plenty so it’s a bowl of side salad again for dinner tonight!

Back from the lottie and into the greenhouse to water the motley assortment of plants I’ve got in there. I spotted this wasp’s nest that has clearly been there some time, but for some reason I’ve never noticed it before.

If the weather’s still OK by the evening, I may manage to eat the salad and cheesecake outside, otherwise it’s dinner in front of Springwatch as usual! It may not have been the “wildest” of days, but spending a few hours in the fresh air pottering down the lottie and tinkering about in the kitchen using things I’ve picked myself, is a great way of recharging the batteries.

 

 

30 Days Wild – Day 12 – Lower Smite Farm

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It’s Day 12 of 30 Days Wild and I headed to Worcestershire Wildlife Trust’s headquarters – Lower Smite Farm. It is, as its name suggests, a working farm  – but  one that is managed with the wildlife in mind in everything that’s done. The Trust have created a nature trail that encompasses a range of habitats and that’s what I followed today.

The trail started in the wildlife garden, which was an absolute delight. There were lots of ideas for wildlife gardening and plenty of information. I loved the little blackboards that were dotted around explaining things, like this one about solitary bee nests.

Not too surprisingly the whole site was a-buzz with bees, both in the garden and in the fields beyond. Every time I see a bee or a butterfly on the bird’s foot trefoil, it makes me think – we really must plant some of that in our own garden!

From the wildlife garden, the trail took me to the Granary; a 300 year old barn that is apparently full of bats.

The building had these wonderful ironmongery lizard and frog on the doors – don’t know if they are original features or later additions, but if I’m ever lucky enough to own an old house, I want a pair of these!

The trail led from the Granary past a pond and wetland area. I thought I got a glimpse of a reed bunting, but it was too fleeting to get a photo.  After the pond the path turned into a field and followed the hedgerow. The margins of the field were full of wildflowers, such as these stunning poppies.

All morning I could hear lots of birds, but most of the time they remained hidden. So I loved finding this tree with a bunch of jackdaws, spaced out perfectly along the branch with a single pigeon lording it above them!

The next pond area had lots of rustling noises coming from the reeds, but presumably I had made too much noise approaching and nothing would show its face.

But as I started to leave the pond, I could hear a strange bird call – almost like a squeaking cough! This little bird turned out to be the source of the strange noise. A bit of googling back home and I think it was a Whitethroat.

Apparently they make this call when they have young – if it was trying to warn me off though, it had the opposite effect as I stopped to find out what it was! As it called it puffed up the white feathers on its throat – maybe also intended to scare me off?

I tried videoing it to record the call, in case I couldn’t identify it when I got back home. The video is not a great success as mainly what you can hear is the wind (will it ever stop blowing this June?), but you can just about see the bird and make out its short staccato call.

Leaving the irate Whitethroat behind, I followed the path into some fields. It was lovely to see lots of Meadow Brown butterflies. As I walked I kept flushing them up from the path, but I never seemed to be able to spot them before they took off and were gone. So the best Meadow Brown photo I managed all day was this poor one taken from an odd angle!

I had more luck with the Large Skippers which were also fairly common today. They looked lovely fresh specimens and were bright orange, with their distinctive hook tipped antennae.

I was also really pleased to see my first Common Blue butterflies of the year, feeding on clover.

One insect which I kept spotting and which I would have loved to get a decent photo of was a Scorpion fly. The key thing about a Scorpion fly is that it has a tail like a scorpion – so guess which bit was hidden by bits of grass in all my photos?

There is a convenient bench at the top of one of the fields where you can sit and look out over the farm across Worcestershire. This photo reminded me of one of my Mum’s paintings – she often used to paint views with flowers in the foreground like this.

Heading down hill back towards the farm, the trail leaflet mentioned that you could see ridge and furrow marks in the field. This indicates that this field was farmed as far back as the middle ages, when ploughing techniques meant the soil built up into these ridges. You can just about make it out in this photo – wonderful to see a part of living history like this.

So that was my morning spent meandering around Lower Smite Farm. It’s another place that is definitely going on my return visit list – preferably on a sunnier day with no wind though (should we ever get such a day again!) I loved the mix of natural history and cultural history that this place has, with its remnants of old farm buildings and fields. Perfect place for the trust’s HQ!

 

30 Days Wild – Day 11 – Demoiselles and Damsels

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It’s Day 11 of 30 Days Wild and I was out and about in search of some of my favourite insects.  This wild June weather is starting to get a bit annoying though – the wind doesn’t seem to have stopped blowing here for days – not ideal especially when you’re trying to take photos of something as flighty and ephemeral as a dragonfly!

Windy weather aside, it was a lovely day and I headed out to one of my all time favourite places – The Knapp & Papermill Nature Reserve on the other side of the Malvern Hills. I know I visited this reserve last year for 30 Days Wild, but I just couldn’t resist going again.

I hoped to see one of my favourite insects, the Beautiful Demoiselle and also if I was really lucky maybe a kingfisher. Well I got one out of two!

The reserve has a stream (Leigh Brook) running through it and does get kingfishers, just not while I was there today. The wildlife trust has built a screen overlooking a suitable patch of the stream, so that if you’re lucky you can watch the kingfishers unseen.

Beyond the screen is the water surrounded by trees and a vertical bank the other side – ideal kingfisher habitat. But just because you’ve got everything a kingfisher might want, doesn’t mean they’re going to turn up on cue. It’s still a really nice spot to wait and relax, watching the brook flow by.

Fortunately I had more luck on the insect front. I spotted demoiselles and damselflies almost as soon as I set foot in the reserve. Even without the insects it would have been lovely though. As you enter there is a pool surrounded by gorgeous flag irises.

Further into the reserve there are little pathways going off the main track, taking you on your own magical mystery tours.

Up the second of these I tried, I found these orchids – they may only be the Common Spotted ones, but they are beautiful nonetheless.  I was happy to have found 2 or 3 orchids, but when I rejoined the main track, I came across a meadow absolutely full of them – even better!

As well as the meadows and the stream, the reserve has large areas of woodland and old orchards – all of which were full of birds – none of which would pose for the camera! A whole flock of long-tailed tits swooped into a tree right in front of me, there must have been at least a dozen and yet I still couldn’t get a better picture than this.

After 20 more minutes of fruitless birdwatching, I swapped back to the macro lens and concentrated on the insects. The Beautiful Demoiselles were flitting around like tropical birds – it still amazes me that you can get such beautiful insects as these in Britain. There seemed to be more males, although that may just be because they are flashier and easier to spot. The males have stunning blue wings with an emerald green body.

The females have more of a bronze colour to the wings, with a white spot near the end. I think last year we got better photos of both, but then it wasn’t so windy!

There were loads of them and I could have watched them all day. I did try and take some short video clips, but I don’t think they really capture them properly. The first clip just shows a male flexing his wings, but then a bright blue damselfly photo bombs in the top left corner!

 

I’ve tried to be clever with the second clip as I accidentally discovered a slo-mo feature when I was reviewing the clips. So this one shows the same male taking off for a short flight and the flight bit is in theory slowed down so you can see his aerial acrobatics better. Think I may need to practice this technique a bit more though!

 

Besided the demoiselles, I saw two species of damselfly. The bright blue ones were most numerous and turned out to be Azure Damselflies.

As I was heading back to the car, I spotted some Large Red Damselflies including this mating pair. The male is the one on the left and he has grasped the female on the right by her neck. They flew around the pond attached to each other like this for a few minutes while I watched. At some point the female will curl her body up and round to meet the male’s and then they will mate, but they didn’t get that far while I was spying on them!

I absolutely love this reserve, it is worth going to see the demoiselles alone, but there is so much more besides. It is tucked away in a small valley off an already off the beaten track road and always feels like such an oasis of calm.