Butterflies

Holiday Snaps – Part 1

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I imagine many people make a list of stuff they will need to take when they go on holiday: swimsuit, sunglasses, sun cream ….. bat detector, night vision googles, trail camera, GoPro camera and moth trap. Our packing list may not be 100% conventional, but for me these are all part of the fun of going somewhere new – essentials for discovering the wildlife in and around our holiday cottage. Last month in northern Lancashire, just south of the Lake District was no exception. The main target may have been the 2 new butterfly species in the last blog post, but we’re always keen to see what else is around.

In the end it was a bit windy for a lot of the week, so I only managed to put the moth trap out once, but it still produced some species that we’ve never seen in our own garden. This Mullein Wave was completely new to me, looking like a larger version of a Small Dusty Wave.

Then there were 2 purples – Purple Clay and Purple Bar, both new to me as the only purple we get at home is a Purple Thorn.

The rest of the moths in the trap were ones I had seen before, although in different proportions – lots more White Ermines than I ever get at home for instance. The Brown China Mark (below) was perhaps not surprising, given that their caterpillars are aquatic and we had a lake at the bottom of the garden at the holiday cottage.

We tend to keep an eye out for moths as well as butterflies when we’re out on walks and were lucky enough to spot a few day-flying ones. The Cinnabar is common at home, but is still always a treat to see with its flash of red underwings.

The Marbled White Spot was a bit more of an unusual find for us at the Foulshaw Moss Nature Reserve.

I had initially noted the next moth down as a Brown Silver-line, but on closer inspection, decided it was a July Belle – another new species.

Mothy highlight for me though was finding this Clouded Buff up on Irton Fell –  a stunning moth, that my poor photo doesn’t do justice to, but it shot off before I could get a better pic (and having used all my energy just getting up Irton Fell, I was in no state to chase it!).

Although we’d gone keen to see the Mountain Ringlet and Northern Brown Argus, any butterfly sightings are always welcome. This faded Pearl or Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary (if anyone can confirm which I’d appreciate it) was spotted at Warton Crags Nature Reserve.

This Dingy Skipper at Arnside Knott was also a nice addition to the week, as it’s a species we don’t see that often.

Small Heath butterflies were fairly common at a lot of the places we visited and several had the decency to pose nicely for photographs.

We were particularly pleased to find Large Heath butterflies at Foulshaw Moss, as we’d only seen them once before at Whixall Moss. Unfortunately it was blowing a gale at Foulshaw and then started to rain, so we didn’t get any really decent photos, but it’s definitely a site to go back to in the future.

Finally we also saw a lot of Large Skippers, also at Foulshaw, but in areas more sheltered from the wind. Large Skippers always seem quite happy to have their photos taken and several posed peacefully on the bracken.

Our holiday photos are perhaps as odd as our holiday packing list, we don’t take many of each other, just the wildlife around us – it is after all far more photogenic!

 

 

 

Butterflies No 54 & 55!

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Yes we’re creeping ever closer (albeit at snail’s pace) to our target of seeing all 58 species of butterfly in mainland Britain! Last week we had a lovely holiday just south of the Lake District near a village called Silverdale. As well as enjoying a relaxing week, our aim was to see 2 new species of butterfly – the Northern Brown Argus and the Mountain Ringlet.

The weather at the beginning the week was not on our side – grey skies, cooler temperatures and blowing a gale – not ideal butterfly spotting conditions. But after a couple of days, things had perked up enough to have a go for the first species – the Northern Brown Argus. We tried a couple of sites – Warton Crag nature reserve & Jenny Brown’s Point in Silverdale with no luck. Arnside Knott, a hill nearby, was going to be our next attempt, but we weren’t sure whereabouts on the hill to look. Then a stroke of luck on Facebook – someone had seen these butterflies at Arnside Knott the day before and very kindly posted a google map shot with the spots marked on. We headed over and it was as if the butterflies had seen the FB post too – they were spot on for the map location.

Finding them was one thing,  but photographing them was another. They were very small and very fast. The first one we snapped was barely a record shot – enough to confirm it was indeed a Northern Brown Argus.

An hour or so of chasing butterflies madly around in the sunshine and we managed a few more respectable shots. On the upperside of the wings you can see the dark dot with the white outline which marks it out as a Northern Brown Argus (the dot and of course the location this far north).

On the underside of the wings, the forewing is missing a black spot near the base that would have made it a Common Blue.

No. 54 proved relatively painless in the end, but no. 55 was going to be more of a challenge. The Mountain Ringlet, as the name suggests, likes to live up hills – big hills! It is the UK’s only montane butterfly and I am not a montane kind of woman! But there was going to be no other way than to climb, so climb we did – up Irton Fell in Cumbria. Most of the people we met that day also seemed to be looking for the same butterfly, so at least we knew we were in the right place. It nearly killed me, but it was worth it – for the butterflies and the views.

As with the Northern Brown Argus, the Mountain Ringlet is small and fast. Fortunately its chocolate brown colour stood out well against the grasses and heather when it was flying; but once it went down into the grass it was virtually impossible to find. We saw quite a few of them but most eluded the camera. Most of our photos were like this – blurry, but just about recognisable as a Mountain Ringlet – all hastily taken before it shot off again.

But eventually, as we’d started to turn back down hill, one stopped long enough to get a decent photograph; butterfly no. 55 had been ticked off the list.

We’re unlikely to manage any more new species this year, so for now we will remain 3 short of our goal – the Lulworth Skipper, the Scotch Argus and the Chequered Skipper will have to wait another year.

 

2021 – The Year of the Slug

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Well we all started out with high hopes that 2021 was going to be better than 2020. I’m not sure it achieved that, but best to dwell on the positives rather than the (many) negatives of the year. So here’s a round-up of some of my wildlife highlights from 2021, including a catch-up on my clearly over-ambitious New Year’s Resolutions.

The main highlight was probably going to Norfolk. We had originally planned to go in 2020, but covid put paid to that, but we finally made it there in June 2021. We had a rental right by the river in Wroxham, so were surrounded by wildlife from the start – birds, dragonflies and even a resident pike.  We ticked off number 53 on our list of British butterflies with the gorgeous Swallowtail and saw loads of dragonflies and birds. As I write, this I’ve realised I never actually got round to blogging about the birds, so will have to do a bit of a summary of those in a separate post. We visited lots of nature reserves and it was great to see a completely different set of wildlife to that which we get back home in Worcestershire.

Back at home, there’s been plenty of interest in the garden. The moth trap has been running throughout the year, bringing 34 new species to the garden. This takes the total up to an amazing 438 species recorded since I started in 2013. I’d never have dreamed back then that we could get such a huge variety of moths visiting our modest suburban garden. Highlights from this year include whoppers like the Pine Hawkmoth and this Privet Hawkmoth:

At the other end of the size spectrum, there were some lovely micro moths, including this Pearl Grass-veneer – a species I’d been hoping to see for a while.

Another mothy highlight was finally getting to see the flightless female vapourer moth and not only that, but getting to watch her laying eggs on our garage wall.

We put up more bee hotels last year and were rewarded with plenty of solitary bee activity. No new species recorded in the garden, but thrilled to finally catch a leaf-cutter bee actually cutting leaves.

 

The pond continued to delight and I spent many a happy hour there last year watching the wildlife. We got frog spawn in it for the first time and the newts were busy too. I would love to get toad spawn, but I gather they tend to be faithful to the ponds they were born in, so we will be lucky to get those – but I live in hope. We had plenty of dragonfly and damselfly activity, including home-grown damselflies hatching from the pond. Only one new species was spotted – this Blue-tailed Damselfly, bringing our total Odonata species list for the garden to 10.

We’ve had happy and sad news with our hedgehogs in the garden. The good news is that through the warmer months we were visited nightly by at least one, and sometimes as many as three hedgehogs. Lots of courtship behaviour witnessed on the cameras and a few heated hoggy debates over food or ladies. Some of the courtship was quite late in the year though and the inevitable result was at least one late litter of hoglets. While a second litter may seem like a good idea, the resulting hoglets often don’t have time to fatten up before the winter. The result was that in a 2 week period between the end of October and early November, I had to rescue 6 very underweight hoglets, 2 of whom were out during the day as well. None of these would have survived hibernation without intervention as they just didn’t have the fat reserves. The 6 were all taken to local rescues. Sadly despite the best efforts of the rehabilitators, 3 of them still didn’t make it.

Thankfully the remaining 3 have survived. One has even grown enough that he was released back in our garden during a mild spell. Hopefully the remaining 2 can be released back home in the spring too.

Despite all the enjoyment I’ve had from all of the above, the animals of the year have to be slugs! Not everyone’s favourite I know, but over the last year I’ve grown quite fond of them. For most of this year I participated in a nationwide slug survey and am now a slug fan. Some of the slugs are still being analysed back at slug HQ (a RHS lab), so I’ll have to wait a bit for the final conclusions. But slugs really reached the dizzy heights for me when one of the actual slugs from our garden featured on Gardener’s World – it doesn’t get more exciting than that!

As to last year’s New Year’s Resolutions, I think I’ve failed pretty dismally on most of them (as with most things, I blame this on Covid). Here’s what I set out to do and what I did or did not achieve:

  • Video a dragonfly emerging from our pond. I did see some damselfly larvae and found several exuviae on rocks and plants, but didn’t manage to see them actually emerge in our pond. But we did see some emerging while we were in Norfolk, so can I count that???
  • Expand the moon garden – nope – the moon garden is stuck at the same size it was last year. I still had a good year for moths, but there’s always hope for more.
  • See 2 more species of British Butterfly. Only managed to see 1 more, but it was the fabulous Swallowtail, so more than happy with that.
  • Visit 5 new nature reserves. I think we did do that if I include the ones we went to in Norfolk.
  • Rockpooling. Nope – only managed to see sandy beaches in Norfolk, so no chance for rockpooling.
  • Go and see some wild Ospreys. Nope and again I blame Covid for travel restrictions during Osprey season.
  • The moth tattoo! Maybe I should give up on this!

So what about resolutions for 2022?

  • Continue the quest to see all the British species of butterfly. So far we’ve seen 53 out of the 58. We’re hoping to holiday in the Lake District this year, so with luck might be able to tick 2 more species off the list.
  • I had planned on starting a nature journal, recording the daily goings on in the garden. But as I write this, we are already on the 9th of January and I haven’t made a single journal entry – maybe I can start it in the spring?
  • Rockpooling. I would still really love to be able to film some wildlife in a rockpool with the GoPro. Hopefully there will be some rocky coasts round Cumbria to try this out.
  • Try a night-time safari in the garden. While doing the slug surveys, I was amazed how much invertebrate life was active after dark. So it would be nice to spend a night seeing the other side of our garden life.
  • Do a wildlife audit of the garden – hopefully this will be a lot more fun than that makes it sound. I already know how many moths and bee and dragonfly species we get, but I thought it would be interesting to tally up ALL the species we get. Since we’ve got over 400 moths alone, the total species count should easily make it over 500.
  • The moth tattoo – one of these days.

So despite a pandemic’s efforts to put a dampener on 2021, there was still much to enjoy in terms of wildlife. Being blessed with an interest in wildlife can be a real life-saver when so much of the rest of the world is doom and gloom. There is always something in nature to lift your spirits, whether it’s spotting some exotic bird or getting a slug on Gardener’s World! xx

Butterfly No. 53!

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Thanks to Covid, butterfly no. 53 has been the longest in planning of all the butterflies we’ve seen so far. We had originally planned to go on holiday for a week in Norfolk last June and had booked the accommodation way back in 2019. But of course that all got postponed and then our original booking got cancelled as they sold the property, so we had to find an alternative. Fortunately we managed to book a fantastic house in the middle of the Norfolk Broads and finally got the chance to go in search of the Swallowtail butterflies.

The Swallowtail is the UK’s largest butterfly and an absolute stunner. It looks far too exotic to be found here, so it’s one we’ve wanted to see for a long time. Swallowtails can pretty much only be found in the UK in the Norfolk Broads, where their caterpillars’ food plant – milk parsley grows. We visited Hickling Broad on what turned out to be World Swallowtail Day (purely by chance had we booked our holiday to coincide with this) and went on a short guided boat tour. Our guide very kindly pointed out some of the milk parsley – a fairly non-descript, carrot-top like plant, which we would never have noticed otherwise.

milk parsley

We glimpsed a few swallowtails from the boat, but most of our sightings were on foot – staking out the reed beds and waiting. We were not alone – half a dozen other keen swallowtail watchers were also risking the baking mid-day heat to get a glimpse and hopefully a photo or two.

Photographing moving butterflies in reed beds is not an easy task. As with so many other wildlife photos we try to take, there is always a blade of grass or in this case a reed in the way. So we never got what I’d call a perfect shot, but we did at least get some recognisable ones. So amongst the hundreds of reedy photos we took, here are some of the best:

swallowtail

swallowtail (5)

swallowtail (4)

swallowtail (3)

swallowtail (2)

swallowtail (1)

They may not be award-winning snaps, but you can at least see the “tails” which give them their name. As we started to head back around the reserve, a couple of butterflies chose to fly up and perch on tall blades above the general reed bed. Unfortunately we were the wrong side really, but still got stunning views of the underside of the butterfly.

swallowtail on grass

Chris even managed to get a shot of one in flight – if photographing them in the reed beds was difficult, capturing them in flight was virtually impossible, so he did well to get even this fuzzy shot.

swallowtail in flight

Our trip to Hickling Broads was on the first full day of our holiday, so to see the Swallowtails then was great as it meant we could relax for the rest of the week and any further sightings were a bonus. It would have been nice to get some slightly better photos, but just seeing them was a delight. If it hadn’t been for the baking heat, we could happily have just sat for hours watching them glide about. Proof if ever any was needed that you don’t have to go abroad to see stunning wildlife.

Out & About – Blackhouse Wood & Crews Hill

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Yesterday was a lovely sunny Sunday, so we thought we’d try and have a walk around the little nature reserve we’d failed to get to a few weeks ago – Blackhouse Wood and Crews Hill. Apparently yesterday was National Dawn Chorus Day, so a walk in the woods seemed like a nice idea to hear some bird song. With the Too Lazy ethos we were of course too late to really get the dawn chorus – the birds were doing more of a brunch chorus, by the time we got there, but it was lovely all the same.

Crews Hill signBlackhouse Wood and Crews Hill (which is also wooded) are both owned by Worcestershire Wildlife Trust and are joined to form one long thin area of semi-natural ancient woodland. The shape of the wood meant that for once, we were reasonably confident that we couldn’t possibly get lost!

The path ran pretty much straight through the wood, although it did undulate quite a bit thanks to old quarrying efforts years ago. We may not have quite been up in time for the dawn chorus, but for the first hour or so we didn’t see a soul. A lovely peaceful place to visit.

Crews woodland trail

There were a lot of squirrels (all grey of course round here) scampering through the trees and lots of rustling of mice in the undergrowth.

Squirrel

The wood was full of bird song, although spotting the birds themselves wasn’t that easy. To start with there seemed to be loads of different birds singing, but they almost always turned out to be Blue Tits. I’d no idea Blue Tits had such a variety of songs!

Blue tits

Eventually of course we did manage to differentiate some other bird species. Chris has one of those apps that will identify bird songs for you and it picked up a song thrush although we didn’t actually see it. One of the few songs we can both recognise is the chiffchaff and they were also obliging enough to pose for photos, although this one didn’t look too happy about it.

Chiff chaff

Blackbirds, robins, goldfinches and of course woodpigeons could also be heard singing their socks off. The surprising highlight of the vocals though was an owl calling – neither of us have ever heard one calling in broad daylight like that. Sadly we didn’t see the owl, but we were really lucky to get a good view of a buzzard.

Buzzard

There were quite a few butterflies flitting about in the more open sunny patches; most as usual too quick to photograph apart from this Holly Blue and Speckled Wood.

CJL_1662

Speckled Wood

Invertebrate highlight for me was spotting this tiny longhorn moth. As it fluttered down to land, it was its enormous antennae that caught my eye. The antennae are way longer than the moth’s body (hence the name) and it looks like it must take an extraordinary effort to keep them out of the way when flying.

Longhorn moth

We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours pottering around the wood; it’s nice to find another little gem of a reserve virtually on our doorstep.

Knapp Time

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Lovely weather at the weekend, so we set out with great intentions of visiting a new (to us) nature reserve. Our chosen spot was a small wood not far away – unfortunately this wood only has a tiny car park and others clearly had the same idea. With nowhere to park, we headed back to our perennial favourite – the Knapp and Papermill Nature Reserve. We didn’t manage to get there last year so it was a very welcome “Plan B”.

In the wooded areas we were treated to our first banks of bluebells for the year, looking fabulous in the dappled light.

bluebells

The smell of garlic was heavy in the air in places, with banks of Wild Garlic just coming into flower.

wild garlic 2

Lesser celandines, wood anemones and primroses completed the spring flower array. A plant we don’t see so often was the Butterbur. I always think the Butterbur flowerheads look slightly alien. The leaves in the summer grow huge and were apparently used to wrap butter before the invention of fridges!

butterbur

We’d hoped for some spring butterflies to complement the spring flowers and we weren’t disappointed – 6 species at least – Peacocks, Small Tortoiseshells, Commas, Holly Blues, Brimstones and Orange-Tips.

peacock on bluebell

The Orange-Tips really signal spring to me. We only saw males – hard to miss with their bright orange tipped wings. They were particularly prevalent around the cuckooflowers, a favourite food for their caterpillars.

Orange tip (3)

Apart from the odd bee, it was pretty much butterflies and birds that caught our attention on this visit. The birds were obvious from the start, with this female chaffinch making the most of the bird food the ranger puts out at the entrance to the reserve.

chaffinch

There were buzzards overhead and what I thought was some weird loud bird in the woods, until we decided it was actually a deer calling! Slightly more recognisable were the calls of blue tits and chiffchaffs, although we never actually saw the latter. We saw a pair of blackcaps, but only the female posed for a photo.

female blackcap

There’s a small river running through the reserve and a male mallard was busy snuffling about with his head under water looking for food.

Mallard (1)

Mallard (2)

Further upstream a Grey Wagtail was bobbing about around the weir. The weir seems to be a favourite spot for them to catch insects washed down the slope and we see wagtails here on most visits. This one was reflected beautifully in the still water above the weir.

grey wagtail (6)

Star of the show though has to be this Dipper – Britain’s only aquatic songbird (a beloved fact of many a Springwatch episode!). I have to admit that only Chris saw the dipper as I had been too lazy to walk down the steep steps (or more precisely couldn’t face walking back up said steps!) to that part of the river. So he got the twitcher’s tick without me.

Dipper (1)

Dipper (2)

We usually focus on the wildlife or wild plants we see, but sometimes something a bit more abstract catches the eye. The wagtails weren’t the only things reflecting in the water – we both loved the reflection of this log in the still water behind the weir. A quiet, peaceful image to finish on.

reflections

Out and About – Hollybed Farm Meadows

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HollybedA sunny, if cold, Easter weekend and we took advantage of the lockdown easing to get out and about for the first time this year. So we headed out to find a small nature reserve that we’d not been to before – Hollybed Farm Meadows. We drove past hordes of people heading for the Malvern Hills, but fortunately Hollybed Meadows were virtually deserted and it felt like we had the reserve to ourselves. The meadows may not be at their best until the summer probably, but now we know how to get there, we will definitely go back later in the year.

The hedgerows were full of blossom; I think this is Blackthorn although I wouldn’t argue if someone says it’s Hawthorn. It was lovely whatever it was.

blackthorn

There were plenty of early spring bees enjoying the blossom, plus one of our favourites – the Dark-edged Bee-fly.

beefly 2

Besides the blossom in the hedgerows, the margins of the field were scattered with a variety of spring flowers (there may have been flowers all over the fields, but we were sticking to the footpaths around the edges).  We (tentatively) identified Wood Anemones, Violets (violet and white ones), Cowslips, Celandine and Dead-nettles.

wood anemone

Violets

cowslips

celandine

dead nettle

The floral highlight was probably spotting the first bluebells of the year, reminding us to go out later this month and see the carpets of bluebells on the Malverns.

bluebell

At the far side of the meadows, we went down a bank and were rewarded with the sounds of Chiffchaffs and woodpeckers. We also got lucky with sightings of our first Speckled Woods and Orange Tip butterflies of the year.

Orange Tip

Across a small stream we could see a field full of what we assumed to be wild daffodils. I don’t think it was part of the reserve, so we didn’t venture in, but it felt like a field full of spring!

field of daffodils

An orchard area was being grazed by the cutest, but scruffiest goats ever.

young goatGoat

As we headed back we were treated to a lovely sunny view of the Malvern Hills. We see the hills every day from our garden, but it was really nice to see them from a different perspective. All in all a very pleasant couple of hours and a taste of freedom!

Malvern hills

 

 

2020 – The Year of the Pond

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Well there are probably lots of ways to describe 2020, but most of those aren’t repeatable on what tries to be an upbeat blog. So I will gloss over the obvious and instead try and focus on the many good things that happened in the last year.

First and foremost was that we finally managed to put in a new pond. The timing for this couldn’t have been better – the pond went in during February and of course in March we went into lockdown. Having the pond to sit by and watch develop through those long months was a real sanity-saver. It was amazing how quickly the wildlife moved in and as it matures I’m sure it will only get better.

A real highlight and sense of achievement came at the end of May when George, the Eyed Hawkmoth I’d reared from an egg, finally emerged. I’d been nurturing him for 10 months since I’d found the egg in the moth trap and so I felt like a proud mum when he emerged and flew off into the night. Hopefully there will be sons and daughters of George in flight this summer too.

Another moth related achievement was the creation of our Moon Garden – an area planted specifically to attract moths. And it worked. 39 new moth species were recorded, bringing the running total for the garden to 405. Best of all it attracted a Dark Crimson Underwing – believed to be the first record for this species for the whole of the West Midlands.

2020 turned out to be a good year for butterflies too. Between lockdowns, we managed to add 2 more species (Silver-spotted Skipper and Black Hairstreak) in our mission to see all the British butterflies. We also noted 2 new species for the garden (Silver-washed Fritillary & Brown Argus), although this was more by luck than good management.

The new bee hotels provided lots of interest and again we added 2 species to our garden count (Willughby’s Leafcutter and a Sharp-tailed Bee). Being able to watch both Red Mason & Leafcutter bees build their nests in the tubes was really fascinating.

Despite lockdowns, we still managed to take part in various citizen science projects – including Big Butterfly Count & Garden Moth Scheme. A new project this year is the Slugs Count project.  This is a monthly survey of the garden for slugs and it’s been great (trying) to get to grips with a whole new group.

As I do every year, I’d made various wildlife resolutions at the start of 2020. Of course back in January none of us had any idea of how the year was going to turn out! Not surprisingly the Covid imposed restrictions had an impact on some of my resolutions, but at least this year I’ve got a really good excuse for not completing them all! So here were last year’s targets:

  • New pond – well at least we smashed this one. Many thanks to Gwyndaf the Cycling Gardener who was the one who did all the hard work digging, while we sat back and reaped the rewards.
  • Create a Moon Garden. I think we pretty much nailed this one too. The Moon garden was a big success both aesthetically and for the moths.
  • See 2 more species of British Butterfly. For a while it seemed touch and go whether we would achieve this one. Our planned trip to Norfolk to see the Swallowtails was of course cancelled, but in the end we did manage 2 other species (always good to have a plan B). So we’ve now seen 52 of the 58 species.
  • Visit 5 new nature reserves. I think we only managed 2 new ones (Glapthorne Meadows and Aston Rowant NR), but then many of the nature reserves were closed to the public during the lockdowns, so I figure we have an excuse.
  • Go rockpooling. Had hoped to do this one in Norfolk, but of course that went out the window. Not much scope for rockpooling in Worcestershire, so this one will have to get bumped to next year.
  • Go and see some wild Ospreys. Again we were thwarted by Covid. I had hoped to go up to see the Dyfi Ospreys, but for a large part of the year we’ve not been allowed into Wales!
  • The moth tattoo! I genuinely thought this would be the year I’d get a moth tattoo – I’ve even decided it should be of George the Eyed Hawkmoth. But of course tattoo parlours were one of the first things to get closed down – so that’s my excuse at least.

So to New Year’s Resolutions for 2021. Covid may continue to thwart our efforts, but we can at least hope to enjoy as much wildlife as possible.

  • Try and video a dragonfly emerging from the pond. We had lots of dragonfly/damselfly egg laying activity in the new pond last year, so hopefully I can catch some of them emerging in the summer.
  • Expand the moon garden – it’s been great so far, but I’m hoping to double the area.
  • See 2 more species of British Butterfly. We’ve now seen 52 of the 58 species, but we’re having to go further and further afield to see the remaining ones. Fingers crossed we can see the Swallowtail in Norfolk at least this year.
  • Visit 5 new nature reserves.
  • Rockpooling. Again fingers crossed we make it to Norfolk for this.
  • Go and see some wild Ospreys – if we’re allowed back in Wales!
  • The moth tattoo!

If 2020 has taught me anything it is that I am very grateful to have a wildlife filled garden and that I am lucky it brings me so much pleasure. It must be awful for those who didn’t get the chance to enjoy wildlife this year, but then I think it would be awful in any year not find joy in the nature that is all around us if we take the time to look.