Category Archives: Wildlife

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 25

Posted on by

This evening I went with a friend to Bampton Cemetery in Oxfordshire.  They visited a grave while I had a look around the Cemetery.  Filling the watering can was a slow process, the tap produced no more than a dribble. While I was stood waiting for the can to fill, I noticed the ivy that is making its way up the tree by the tap, a robin briefly sat on the wall then quickly flew off once it had noticed me.  Walking back along to the grave I noticed that the horse-chestnut tree has leaf-mining moth damage (you can record this data via an app called Leaf watch where the results are submitted to the Conker Tree Science project).  I recorded this tree last year with roughly the same amount of damage.

I noticed that it also had conkers starting to form.  The squirrels that live there like the conker tree, however they also like that my friend leaves them a pile of hazelnuts when he visits.  They have in the winter traded conkers for hazelnuts! Leaving him the conker and running of with the hazelnut, they are quite friendly in winter! 

There are quite a few birds in the area.  The blackbirds were eating the fruit off of what I think is a Japanese Crab tree and I managed to get a single photo of the song thrush before a passer-by scared it off.  There were blue tits and chaffinches in the branches of the trees and woodpigeons grazing among the grave stones.  

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 24

Posted on by

I had lots of tasks to do today which meant I didn’t have a lot of time free to do much wild.  One thing I do everyday that is important, is watering the birds! 


We have one full sized bird bath and 2 small ‘poppy’s’ which are also filled with water that the smaller birds often use, especially when the pigeons are in the garden.  It is important for birds to have access to water all year round but when its especially hot (22°C here at the moment) the water evaporates quickly so its important to keep an eye on the water level and refresh it as often as needed.  Although I didn’t get any pictures earlier, we had goldfinches having a drink and blue tits having a bath.  The doves turned up late this afternoon for a drink. 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 23

Posted on by

Today has been warm and sunny.  I spent this afternoon in the garden looking for insects.  As I was given an insect book for my birthday, I have spent this evening doing my best to identify them.  Some were easier to identify than others! Its been really nice to discover what’s in the garden.  

As I started to thumb through my guide to British insects I spotted one of them straight away – its one of the reasons I like a photographic guide as my brain will connect to a photograph easier than a drawing.  I looked to the info page to find out what it was, much to my surprise it is a common froghopper!  Now on Day 01 when I wrote about cuckoo-spit I said ‘However, we are not very likely to see an adult! They are 6mm long but disappear as soon as they are disturbed – they can jump 70cm in one bound!’ now this one didn’t seem to be bounding anywhere, I think I was extremely lucky to find it 🙂

On the same plant I found harlequin ladybird larvae and on the roses next to that were pollen beetles. 

I moved over to the lavender where I knew there were lots of Honeybee’s (Apis mllifera), a Small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) fluttered around.  Also on the lavender were a couple of Rosemary beetle’s (Chrysolina americana).  

Over the other side of the path is the mini pond, I found a Helophilus Pendulus which to start with wasn’t going to sit still but it finally settled on a leaf and I managed to get a photograph.  

In the greenhouse I found a Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba).  I didn’t get a very good photo as it was all over the place and generally hiding down the back of the plants.  

So with a little time in the garden this afternoon I have seen 8 different insects, 3 of which I have never seen before 🙂

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 21

Posted on by

I sometimes have to work away from home; tonight this had its advantages, a beautiful roe deer.  I was still working at the time, moving locations. Turning the corner into another field, I came face to face with this doe.  She stood and looked at me briefly before turning and trotting away.  I love having chance encounters with mammals when out and about.  It does worry me that she didn’t run as soon as she saw me, I was only ever going to take her photograph, but who knows who else she could run into! 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 17

Posted on by

I haven’t been to Wildlife Trust’s Lower Moor Farm since January, so I thought it was about time I made another visit and went along this afternoon.  I’m not sure if it was the weather or I just picked the wrong time of day but there didn’t seem to be much bird life about!  There was a cormorant sat on a post, a few woodpigeon’s flying from tree to tree, a black headed gull, a grey heron flew over and a family of mute swans were on Cottage lake.  There were smaller birds flitting from tree to tree but everything seemed to be hiding away in all the leaf cover.  

The most exciting event of the afternoon was spotting my first orchid – a common spotted-orchid.  I have probably seem them before but no knowingly so! 

Also there are loads of froglets! One poor little chap had got himself caught in spiders webs on the floor of the hide, so after carefully removing the web from his back legs I placed him safely back outside.  The walk back to the car was slow and careful, I counted 28 froglets 🙂

 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 16

Posted on by

Each year when late spring arrives I start to look out for the swifts.  The house that backs onto my back garden have nesting swifts  They don’t have a nest box but there is a natural cavity underneath some of their roof tiles. I’m not sure if they know they are there nor not but I get the impression they are not very nature friendly so I don’t like to draw attention to their arrival just in case they decide to block up the hole!  This year they arrived on May 7th. They are generally joined by another 4 swifts screeching around the house and its so lovely to hear.    

Swifts are an amber-listed bird, this means we need to be worried about them.  There breeding numbers have been decreasing; 51% between 1995 and 2015.  One of the reasons for their reducing numbers is partly down to the loss of their nesting locations.  They nest in the same place every year. When they get back in the spring their home can sometimes be gone.  This can be down to people fixing their roofs or buildings being demolished completely.  One of the best things we can do for them is to increase the locations that they have available to nest in.  I would love to have a swift nest box on the house but they have some requirements.  There needs to be a clear 5 meter drop from the nest as this is what they need when the swoop up to the nest and also for leaving it.  This I have on one side of the house, however its west facing and doesn’t have shade from the sun, so unfortunately its unsuitable 🙁 If you have a suitable location for a swift box, please if you can, help out these wonders of summer.  You can find out more at swift-conservation.org and also submit your sightings to the RSPB.

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 14

Posted on by

I knew today was going to be a day where I wouldn’t have much time to get out in the wild, so last night I put the trailcam out in the field with some left over cake! Yes I know not the best thing for the fox but they don’t get given it very often, its normally chicken carcass or eggs.  She has however, been helping herself to next doors new guinea fowl!!  They saw her watching them the other week but I’m assuming didn’t put them behind the electric fence with the other chickens so they went ‘missing’.

I think we can safely say she also likes cake!!  Over a period of 3 hours she squirreled it away to various locations nearby.  I’d cut it up a bit so it didn’t fall apart as she carried it off.  I don’t know if that was just to hide it from anyone else that might want the steal it or because she seemed a little weary of the camera, though she hasn’t worried about it before.  I wondered if she had cubs nearby… I hope she has cubs 🙂 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 13

Posted on by

This evening on the way home from work I spent about an hour at Wildlife Trusts Whelford Pools.  This is the first time I have visited this year.  I only went to the first hide but it was nice to see the regular birds there: 2 swans and a cygnet, 4 black headed gulls, common tern, 4 great crested grebe & 3 young, 3 tufted ducks, a woodpigeon, a herring gull, 24 cormorants, a coot, a lesser black backed gull and a magpie.  There were also a few smaller birds that flitted in front of the hide although I didn’t get a good enough look at them to enable identification.

The most interesting event of the evening was watching a lesser black backed gull (I think, I’m not great at gull identification!) catching what I think was a crayfish!  It will be nice to visit again soon and go on to the second hide; I’m yet to see a kingfisher this year and I was lucky enough to see one there last year 🙂

 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 11

Posted on by

I had planned to walk around the field this evening but other events forced a change of plan.  I had to help a friend with a task which took longer than either of us expected, so today I spent 10 mins looking through the long grass and stinging nettles at the bottom of their garden.  The sun began to set, I wasn’t sure if I would find anything.  I started by looking at the plants and grasses and as I looked more closely I noticed the insects hiding within.  At first I noticed the bees flitting around the flowers and then the Common Blue Damselfly that landed nearby.  The stinging nettles had lots of Cuckoo-spit which lead me to notice the snail and fly (I have no idea what type!) on the next plant along.  It was bustling with life; I could have stayed there for ages delving deeper into the vegetation.  

 

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 09

Posted on by

Exploring the garden today I found lots of bees on the Geranium – Early bumblebee, Honeybee and Brown carder bee (I think! I’m not brilliant at identifying bees!!).  The Geranium is always a favorite plant for them and there is always lots of activity around it. 

Each year Friends of the Earth run the Great British Bee Count (May 17th – June 30th 2018).  You can download the app for both android and apple which makes it all super quick and easy.  Its very simple; spot a bee, take a photo if possible, identify it, note the weather conditions and habitat, enter your location and send off the data 🙂 At the time of writing this 197,292 bees had been logged so far this year, with 21 days to go. 

As we all know our pollinators are having a very tough time with loss of habitat, intensive farming and changes in our climate.  The more we know about all of our pollinators, the more we can help them.  By adding sightings to the bee count more data is added to the Pollinator Monitoring Scheme, which is basically a health check of our bees and other pollinators.  35 of the UK bees species is under threat of extinction so knowing the abundance of them and their location, is all valuable information. 

We can all do a little to help all of our insects whether it is taking in part in the Bee Count or other record schemes, converting part of the garden to a mini wildflower meadow or just leaving the dandelions to grow in the lawn, every little thing helps.  Have you seen any bees today?