Nocturnal

National Moth Week

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It’s National Moth Week (or International since it’s worldwide) and for once I’m on the ball enough to be blogging on time and on topic! This is mainly due to the fact that I read a lovely blog post this morning on this very subject by Nature is My Therapy: https://natureismytherapy.com/2022/07/26/moths-not-just-for-after-dark/  So thank you Kim for the timely reminder.

National Moth Week celebrates the beauty and diversity of moths, a sentiment close to my heart as I’ve been fascinated by the moths in my garden since I started trapping in 2013. This week, after 9 years of moth trapping and perfectly timed for National Moth Week, I recorded the 450th species of moth in my garden! I never dreamt when I started looking at moths that I’d find anywhere near this number in my suburban garden. Just goes to show you don’t know what’s out there until you start looking. Of course of those 450 species, some have only been recorded once – often migrant moths just passing through. But a good chunk of the species are regular attendees at my moth trap.

So here is no 450 – the Brown-Line Bright Eye (Mythimna conigera) – so called because (not surprisingly) it has a brown line and a bright eye spot.

Coincidentally the same night I also trapped the very similarly named Bright-Line Brown-Eye (Lacanobia oleracea). So here they are side by side.

I trap 2 or 3 times a week through the summer and usually once a week in the winter. I started this year with a running total of 438 species, so another 12 have been added since then. Of the new ones, a couple are ones I’ve wanted to see for a while and others haven’t even been on my radar. The longed for ones include a Nut-tree Tussock a (Colocasia coryli) and a Muslin Footman (Nudaria mundana).

Of the more unexpected ones this Italian Tubic (Metalampra italica) micro moth was rather lovely and one I’d never even heard of. Apparently it’s a recent colonist that’s spreading north from the south of England.

So the trap is out again tonight and I’ll be up at the crack of dawn to check the contents, hopefully before the robin beats me to it. It’s one of the things I love about moth-trapping – you never know what you’re going to get – it’s like Christmas morning for moth nerds!

Happy National Moth Week everyone.

 

Moon Garden

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One of the things on my New Year’s Resolution list, way back before 2020 went crazy, was to create a Moon Garden. I’d got the idea originally from one of Butterfly Conservation’s e-newsletters; amongst the tips for things to do to encourage wildlife was to make a Moon Garden. This is specifically planted to encourage night time wildlife, in particular moths. Most of the plants are white/cream or pale yellow, so they almost glow in the moonlight. Many of them are also more fragrant at night and so should attract plenty of moths. Although at the beginning of 2020 we had already recorded 367 species of moth in the garden, there was always more to hope for!

A patch of garden had been roughly cleared in late autumn, so just needed digging over and any remaining weeds removed.  Here’s the obligatory “before” photo of the soon-to-be Moon Garden area.

Using the list from Butterfly Conservation’s website I ordered some of the plants as ready grown specimens and, to cut down costs a bit, some of the plants as seeds. One of the plants I was particularly keen to grow was the Tobacco Plant (Nicotiana alata) – known to attract the Convolvulus Hawk-moth, a large migrant moth. These grow quite large and tall and have long tubular flowers perfect for the moth’s long proboscis.

Other pale flowers included white alyssums and lavenders, evening primroses, night-scented stocks and phlox, hebe, jasmine and honeysuckle. There were a few, such as white campion, that I simply couldn’t get this year – thanks to covid closures of local garden centres and online sources being swamped with orders. But all in all I was very lucky to get a nice mix of flowers for the moon garden.

A final addition to the garden was Lamb’s Ears (Stachys byzantina)- grown not only for the silvery-ness but also the hairiness of its foliage. This had two-fold appeal – the plant is not only attractive to moths, but the hairs on the leaves are collected by Wool Carder Bees. I’ve only ever seen one Wool Carder Bee in the garden, so had hoped to attract more. Sadly if they did come they did so while my back was turned. But the Lamb’s Ears have grown well, so hopefully next year I can split the plants to get greater coverage.

So this is what I ended up with – or at least this is the stage mid-summer before the Nicotiana and evening primroses took over. For some reason I forgot to take a photo later on before they all died off again! This part of the garden really did smell lovely in the evenings, with the mix of the honeysuckle and other night scented flowers.

So I’d built it, but would they come? Well I may not have got a Convolvulus Hawk-moth yet, but plenty of other species have been more obliging. We started the year on 367 moth species recorded for the garden and to date we now have 405 – an increase of 38.  Of course I can’t prove that all these 38 are a direct result of planting the moon garden, but I’m sure some of them at least must be. And since the garden looks and smells lovely anyway, it’s certainly a win-win thing to do.

Although I was primarily expecting to see the moths in the moon garden at night, it was nice to find the occasional one resting there during the day – like this Garden Carpet on the evening primroses. A slightly more impressive find though was this Poplar Hawk-moth roosting during the day on the Nicotiana.

At night the evening primrose flowers were particularly well used by Silver Y moths.

I run my moth trap most weeks close to where the moon garden now is. It may be co-incidence but some species certainly seemed to increase in numbers this year compared to previous years. The Elephant Hawk-moths for instance were arriving in veritable herds compared to the usual singletons.

The new species were a mix of macro and micro moths. Some I’d been longing to see for ages like this Peach Blossom.

But others were completely new to me. Here are a few favourites – Triple Barred Argent (Argyresthia trifasciata for the purists – a stunning golden striped micro), Lesser Spotted Pinion and Least Black Arches.

The undoubted highlight has to be the moment I discovered a Dark Crimson Underwing in the trap. I nearly put it down as being one of the regular Red Underwings (in my defence, it did after all appear to have red underwings) which I have occasionally found in the garden before. But it looked a bit different, so I double-checked with those much wiser than me and was thrilled to find it was a Dark Crimson instead. Not only did this turn out to be a new species for Worcestershire, it is probably new for the whole of the West Midlands region – result!

So all in all I’ve been very pleased with the results from my moon garden experiment. So much so in fact that I intend to extend it next year and hopefully double the area. Some of the perennials may take years to grow to their full potential, so hopefully it will get better as time goes on. Again it may be coincidence but we noticed more bat activity over the garden this year (hope they didn’t snaffle my longed-for convolvulous hawk-moth, although I suspect it would be too big!), which is great too. Perhaps next year I might plant an area specifically for caterpillar food plants too – it’s all got to be beneficial after all.

Our local branch of Butterfly Conservation had asked earlier this year for moth related articles for the magazine. I was delighted that they included an article on our Malvern Moon Garden. It was Butterfly Conservation’s article that inspired me to plant it in the first place, so it would be lovely if our garden could then inspire someone else to have a go and encourage more moths into their own garden.

I’m not normally one given to poetic quotes, but there’s a line from William Blake – “The Moon, like a flower in heaven’s high bower, with silent delight, sits and smiles on the night” which makes me think of our moon garden – a silent delight giving both me and hopefully the moths great pleasure.

 

 

 

 

Freda – A Hog’s Tale

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If anyone reads this blog regularly, they will know that hedgehogs feature quite a lot. We feed the hogs, put water out for the hogs, provide houses for the hogs, pester the neighbours to put gaps in fences for hogs, watch the hogs on cameras and generally worry about our hogs and their well-being on a near daily basis.

When we got a hedgehog house with built in camera, we were thrilled to get one using it regularly. Never staying the whole night, but most nights he or she would come and have a rest for an hour or so, before continuing with the nightly foraging. Here’s a compilation from a few nights of resting and yawning!

This hog came at a similar time every night, so we think it was the same one. Following the events below, we hardly saw one using the box for months, our regular just stopped coming. So I think the yawning one above is the one who went on to have an eventful summer – Freda.

In the middle of May we caught a hedgehog with difficulties on one of the cameras. There was clearly something wrong with one back leg in the video below.

I messaged Viv our local hedgehog rehabilitator and she kindly came round to help me look for our limping hog. I had thought I might have to sit up for nights trying to see the struggling hog, but thankfully Viv found it in one of our hedgehog houses. “It” turned out to be a “she” and so she was named Freda. Freda had one back foot missing completely. We’ll never know what happened – whether it was an animal attack or a strimming incident, but it was heart-breaking to see.

Hedgehogs can manage quite well with one back leg missing, but it is usually best to remove the leg entirely. If they are left with a stump it drags on the ground when they walk and the wound keeps getting opened up again and infections would set in. So it was decided that it would be best for Freda to have the leg amputated and she would stay at Viv’s until her wound had healed and her spines had grown back.

Poor Freda had more drama in store though. Having survived the operation successfully, it turned out she was pregnant. In June she gave birth to 5 hoglets. Unfortunately Freda had developed an infection and was unable to suckle the babies properly. Sadly by the time this was discovered it was too late to save the  hoglets.

Fortunately Freda herself responded well to antibiotics and began to recover from her ordeals. By the middle of July she was well enough to be fostered back to us in our hutch in the garden. We could feed and monitor her for a while and it would free up space at Viv’s for other hedgehogs in more need. I pointed a camera at the hutch to check how Freda was doing on her first nights in the hutch. Although she could move around the hutch well on 3 legs, unfortunately she seemed completely stressed out by it all. She could now smell the garden and like most wild animals was desperate to be free. She was climbing the front of the hutch and scratching at the walls trying to get out.

Stress can be a killer for hedgehogs, so we couldn’t keep her cooped up like this any longer. Viv has someone with an enclosed garden that she uses to do soft releases for hedgehogs like Freda. Freda could be released into this garden and monitored to make sure she could cope back outside on her own and move around OK with only 3 legs. Fortunately Freda proved that she could cope very well, so after a week it was decided to catch her and bring her back to our place to release in the garden properly this time. It is always best to release hedgehogs back where they came from if at all possible, so Freda came back home.

I put her in the hedgehog house with the inside camera and blocked the entrance so she’d stay there until it got dark. She settled right in and had a bit of a nap as if she knew she was home. When it got dark enough, I unblocked the entrance and off she went.

The video below shows her emerging from the hedgehog house (ignore the date on one of the cameras, it wasn’t set right). Almost immediately she finds some smell she’s interested in and starts self-anointing – a good sign I think that she’s behaving naturally. Then off she trundles into the rest of the garden.

We had cameras set up round the garden for the next few nights to check she was OK. Fortunately she seems happy to stay in our garden where there is plenty of food and water. Her gait may not be gainly but it doesn’t stop her moving around and finding food, water and shelter.

We weren’t the only ones pleased to have her back in the garden. By the second night she had already attracted an admirer. We’ve had a one-eyed hedgehog in the garden for some time – we hadn’t known whether it was male or female, but given the attention it was paying to Freda I think we can safely assume it’s a male. I’ve named him Wodan – the Anglo-Saxon variation on Odin the one eyed god! In the video below Freda goes into the hedgehog house and within minutes Wodan is running up and down looking for her, before realising she’s in the house and following her in.

Wodan may be keen, but Freda is less so. A couple of nights after her return to the garden he pursued her for at least an hour and a half. They circled round and round with lots of annoyed huffing from Freda.

The same happened inside the house – she clearly wasn’t impressed and did her best to turf him out.

Whether Wodan got his way with Freda in the end – well we won’t know unless of course she has another litter of hoglets. It’s getting late in the year for hoglets to be born now – they won’t have enough time to put on weight before the winter. So that will be the next worry for us and for Freda. Fingers crossed though that the dramas are over for Freda now and that she can live a long and healthy life in the relative safety of our garden.

A huge thank you to Viv at Malvern Hedgehog Rescue http://www.malvernhedgehogrescue.co.uk/  for all she’s done for Freda and all the other hedgehogs in her care. Hedgehog rescues like Viv’s tend to be self-funded so please consider supporting your local one. Donations of food, supplies or just good old financial support are always welcome.

Or why not consider becoming a supporter of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society https://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/ – raising awareness and campaigning on behalf of our native hedgehogs.

Or simply help the hedgehogs in your own garden. Put out shallow dishes of water; all year round but especially in hot dry weather. Supplement their natural food with either meaty cat or dog food, dry cat food or good quality hedgehog food. Leave a bit of your garden wild to provide natural food and shelter. Simple things that can make a big difference.

 

30 Days Wild – Day 30 – Night and Day

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I’m running late with the blog, so this is for yesterday’s Day 30 of 30 Days Wild! I’d thought it would be nice to push the 30 days to the limit and be looking at wildlife right up to midnight on the last day. So the plan was to set the trap for moths, the trail camera for hedgehogs and sit out looking for bats. As it turned out, with a few glasses of G&T and our friend to talk to as we sat outside, midnight came and went and it was 2:30am before we packed up. Not surprisingly then it’s taken a while to get going on the blog today!

All week we’ve been seeing bats in the garden, swooping around hoovering up our plentiful insects. They’ve come really close to the house as they circle around a large buddleia. But last night of course as we sat there waiting for them with bat detector in hand – none at all! It was a bit windy, but other than that the conditions seemed OK, but they were a no-show. Somewhere in Malvern someone else was probably enjoying “our” bat show! So all I can really say is that we normally get pipistrelles, which click on our bat detector at about 45 kHz.

Similarly with the hedgehogs, all week we’ve had a pair snuffling round the garden at night. It’s been great to be able to show our human friend our hoggy friends. So I was sure we’d pick them up on the trail camera last night – but again nothing! This absence can probably be explained though by our gin-swigging presence in the garden until 2.30. If I were a hedgehog I probably wouldn’t want to listen to 3 humans laughing loudly at their own jokes and clinking glasses either! So I’ve no video to show from last night, but fortunately I can do one we filmed earlier in the week (in true blue peter fashion) of our resident pair. It looks like the larger male is trying to woo the smaller female – with very little success!

So that left the moth trap to deliver the goods for our nocturnal nature-fest. But even the moths were few and far between (maybe that was why there were no bats?) A few came while we were still sitting there, but refused to actually go in the trap. This pretty green Common Emerald fluttered about and two Swallowtail moths entertained us by flapping somewhat ungracefully around us for a while. One of the Swallowtails was even still there in the morning.

My first Mother of Pearl of the year sat on the outside of the trap but didn’t go in – hence the shadowy photo lit up by the blue bulb from the moth trap.

There were a few Heart & Darts and a couple of other species in the trap when I emptied it this morning. None made for great photos apart from this Garden Grass Veneer.

There was one final mothy visitor – our friend spotted movement in the bushes this morning and found a Common Footman.

So our nocturnal safari of wildlife round the garden didn’t quite go as planned – when do things ever? But it didn’t matter at all. We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening sitting out in the garden until all hours, making the most of just being outside.

So that would have been the end of the blog post for Day 30, except that this morning as we photographed the last of the moths, suddenly the garden filled with butterflies (maybe wanting to get in on the act as Day Moths?). We’ve had hardly any butterflies lately but today we had 7 species fly in all within the space of an hour or two.

Every year we seem to get a pair of ringlets and sure enough they turned up today. One even chased off a Meadow Brown from his patch!

Then the first Red Admiral we’ve had for ages flew in and out, stopping to feed on the buddleia for a bit.

We also saw Large Whites, one Small White and a fleeting Comma. Two Small Tortoiseshells completed the day’s sightings. They fed on the buddleia (too high up for photos), the red valerian (waving about in the wind too much for decent photos) and thankfully one settled on the stationary table for an easy photo.

So it would have seemed rude not to include the day flyers with our night time ones. So what if it extended 30 Days Wild by a few hours – why wouldn’t you want to do that? In fact why wouldn’t you want to go a bit wild and get a bit of nature into your life every day? Stay Wild!

Hedgehog Awareness Week

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Today marks the start of Hedgehog Awareness Week – an annual event focussed on all things hoggy, organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. I’ve been saving up hedgehog related news for a few weeks now, in readiness for Awareness Week and I’ve got a surprising amount to report!

The big news for me personally was that I handed my notice in at my previous job and had planned to have a bit of time off. That was until I spotted an admin job going at the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS) – it was just too tempting to resist.  I applied and am absolutely thrilled to say I got the job! It’s only 2 days a week which is absolutely perfect for me as it gives me plenty of time to be not weeding the garden! So here is my new place of work:

The next big piece of news is that Meadow our foster hedgehog has now been released into the Too Lazy To Weed garden. I took him back to be checked over by Viv at Malvern Hedgehog Rescue before we released him. This is him in the cat basket on the way there.

Viv checked his weight (he’d actually put on a lot of weight as apparently the catfood he’d been on for the last few weeks was a bit rich for him – I’ll know better next time) and then gave the go ahead for him to be released into our garden. He’d been with us since January and in a way I was sorry to see him go, although obviously it was the right thing to do. We waited until dusk, then put the cat basket out under the apple tree where there was plenty of cover for him and just let him come out whenever he was ready. (I was tempted to have the Born Free theme tune playing the background but resisted) This is him emerging from the cat box and taking his first steps in our garden.

I left the trail cam out for the next couple of nights and sure enough he appeared, making a beeline for the food I’d put out. I’m fairly sure it’s him in these next 2 clips as it’s a pretty big hedgehog so I reckon that’s our boy!

Assuming it is him, he seems to be doing well and has obviously found somewhere safe to rest during the day and knows where I put food and water out each night. Live long and prosper Meadow!

I’d been putting the trail camera out in the hope of getting hoggy videos for a few weeks before Meadow’s release. Most of the footage was of course taken in the dark, but I got this one short film of a hedgehog in the very early hours of the morning in daylight (I think the camera’s clock was out by an hour or two though as it wasn’t this light at 04:30am). Hopefully he or she was just getting a last minute snack before hiding away for the day somewhere.

It’s never easy to distinguish the hedgehogs in the garden (apart from Meadow’s currently distinctive chubby form), so it’s difficult to know how many we get. But a lot of trail cam footage shows a pair of hogs, so we know we’ve got at least 2 (3 now with Meadow).

The first time two appeared together it looked like a fight! Don’t know if it was a territorial dispute between 2 males or an overly aggressive male and female, but the one managed to shove the other half way across the lawn.

The following night though there were 2 hogs again. Not so aggressive this time, although the one did seem to be seriously annoying the other. They circled round like this for well over an hour – was it perhaps the start of mating, with the female playing hard to get initially. Have to admire his persistence if it was courtship, although he did seem to get distracted by the food bowl quite often!

A few days after seeing the possible amorous antics on the trail cam, we spotted several areas of grass, flattened and twisted around – presumably the result of all the circling behaviour. You’ve heard of crop circles, we’ve got hedgehog circles!

So that’s all the news from our garden. If anyone wants to do something extra to support hedgehogs during Awareness Week, there are lots of things that can be done.

To support or encourage hedgehogs into your own garden, you can put out food (never bread or milk) and water. If you have a pond, make sure you install a ramp or some other means for hedgehogs to get out if they fall in. Make sure there are gaps in fences/walls so hedgehogs can come and go between gardens – they roam quite a bit during the night so ideally need a large network of gardens. Be super careful when mowing, particularly with strimmers which can inflict terrible injuries on hedgehogs.

If you don’t have a garden or at least don’t get hedgehogs in it, there are still lots of other ways of supporting them. You could join BHPS – your subscription will help support their work. Or you could simply Text HHOG17 to 70070 to donate £5 to the charity.

There are also hundreds of hedgehog volunteer carers around the country – you could do something to help your local one. Donations of cash or food or other general supplies are always welcome. Our local one is Malvern Hedgehog Rescue and Viv there does amazing work caring for up to 100 rescue hogs at a time. Her website has loads of useful information: http://www.malvernhedgehogrescue.co.uk/

Another great example is Little Silver Hedgehog run by Emma. Not only does she rescue & rehabilitate lots of hedgehogs, her blog https://littlesilverhedgehog.wordpress.com/ is full of useful hoggy advice. In addition she makes beautiful silver jewellery that she sells to raise funds for the hedgehogs – I treated myself to this cute pendant to celebrate getting the job with BHPS.

And finally you could always just tweet or post a message on Facebook (or go old school and talk to people) showing your support for these lovely animals – they need all the help they can get.

Hedgehog Housekeeping

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Just a short post today with an update on our foster hedgehog Meadow. We’ve had him now since early January and I’m very relieved that’s he survived the winter with us! We’ve been weighing him every fortnight and although he’s lost a bit of weight, he is still a very healthy 800g or so – plenty heavy enough to see him through to the spring hopefully.

Since we last weighed him he has become increasingly active and has presumably decided he’s had enough of hibernation. For the first 2 months our care duties had consisted mainly of checking each day that he had fresh water and food, but while he was asleep, there was little else to do.

Now he is an eating and pooping machine! His food bowl is at best empty every morning and at worst he’s pooped in it! The water bowl is regularly slopped about soaking the newspapers and he has generally managed to poop in every corner of the hutch! So every day he needs fresh food, water and newspapers and a general clean of the hutch. We never see him though (apart from when we take him out to weigh), he’s always buried in the hay when we look in.

Invisible he may be, but since he is clearly very active when we’re not around, I had a go with the old trail camera in his hutch.  There’s not much space to position it without disturbing him, but I managed to get it wedged by the roof out of his way and he seemed blissfully unaware of it. The field of view is pretty small since it is so close up, but I got lots of clips of him doing what he’s good at – eating and pooping and rearranging his bedding. He clearly doesn’t approve of my style of housekeeping (nor does my husband Chris probably, but that’s a different story) as he is constantly dragging the hay and/or the newspapers around to where he thinks they should be.

So below are a couple of stills taken from the video showing him a) eating of course and b) dragging the hay around. Then there is a compilation of video clips taken over roughly a 24 hour period. Note his food bowl starts of clean and full of food and ends up empty and covered in poop and hay! But he’s a little character and we will miss him when we eventually get the go ahead for releasing him in the spring.

Hedgehog Hydration

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Our hedgehogs seem to be getting mighty picky with their food this week. After the successes of the first few nights of the feeding station, they’ve been turning their little hoggy noses up at my latest offerings. Lots of videos of them going into the box, looking at the food and wandering back out again. Of course because the neighbourhood cat can’t get into the box, I’m left with a bowl of smelly cat food to dispose of each morning.

So far they’ve refused 2 supermarket brands and two supposedly upmarket pet brands of catfood. I’ve been avoiding fishy flavours, but so far they’ve rejected chicken, beef, lamb and even duck! If anyone has any suggestions as to which is the best cat food to feed them with, it would be much appreciated.

But there is good news. They may not be eating the food I’ve put out, but they have at least been drinking the water.  We’ve been leaving bowls of water around the garden and I finally had the brainwave of leaving one in front of the camera. Sure enough at least one of our hogs has been drinking from it.

They don’t show much respect for the water bowl though – this one tramping through it when he or she decides they’ve had enough!

This is really good news as hedgehogs can apparently become dehydrated in hot weather. The Hedgehog Preservation Society advises all gardeners to leave water out for their hedgehogs (and for other wildlife).

So you can lead a hedgehog to food but you cannot make him eat – but you can at least get him to have a good drink! Perhaps the not eating thing is actually a good sign – that they are not that hungry and our garden is providing enough natural food. I hope so.

On the Trail of a Hedgehog

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Hedgehog in bowlFor the last few weeks I’ve been on a bit of a mission to capture some footage of our garden hedgehogs. As always when using our Trail Cam it’s a bit hit or miss what footage we get, with the usual array of grass flapping and leaves falling tending to dominate the films.

I’ve been putting out bowls of catfood, not just to try and film the hedgehogs but also to give them a bit of a helping hand when they might have young. Not too surprisingly though, if you put out catfood you get – cats! In this case one of the neighbours’ cats has learnt this is an easy midnight feast when he’s peckish, although in the footage below he has to share it with some very large slugs!

I have an awful lot of clips of the same black cat stuffing his furry face each night.

Most of the time I persevered with the cat food, until I happened to find a pack of blueberries at the back of the fridge that had gone a bit squishy for my liking. Again I thought this might tempt our hog – again I was wrong. They were all still there in the morning. On the plus side one of our blackbirds did like the look of them. I don’t know if he’s been in a fight with other blackbirds or even the cat, but he’s the scruffiest blackbird ever. But he did like the blueberries – I was a bit worried when I saw this that he was going to choke on one, but he seemed to gobble them down in the end and is still flying tattily around the garden with no ill effects.

The robin (probably the same one who stalks my moth trap) has also learnt that the hedgehog bowl is easy pickings. He’s not that keen on the catfood, but has tried most of my other offerings.

I have managed to get some clips of the hedgehog feeding or at least investigating the bowl. We’ve definitely got 2 adult hedgehogs using the garden as I’ve seen them some evenings, but never managed to get them both to come to the food bowl at the same time!

If nothing else my attempts to feed the hedgehogs are supporting a variety of other wildlife in the garden – blackbird, robin, slugs, assorted flies and spiders and of course the neighbours’ cat! The brief glimpses we get of the hedgehogs though make it all worthwhile. The clips may only be short (for some reason the trail cam won’t do videos of more than 15 seconds at night?), but they give a small insight into the lives of our hoggy friends that we wouldn’t get otherwise.