30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 09

I didn’t have any plans for today’s ‘wild’ activity, it was meant to rain and that hampered my thoughts of what I could do.  I decided to play it safe and just spend some time in the garden.  I know at some point I want to take part in the spittlebug survey so I went to have a look at the lavender to see if there was any about, strangely I didn’t find any but did come across a rosemary beetle. 

There was a lot of buzzing coming from a neighbours garden so I popped round to see if I could find out where it was coming from.  They have a plant on the fence that adjoins our garden which was covered in bees.  There must have been approx. 30-40 bees on the bush at anyone time.  Unfortunately we have no idea what plant it is but it would be great for any garden that wants to attract bees!  

As far as I could tell there were four species of bee; Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) which seemed to be the majority, honey bees which I saw two of, Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) and then Tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

Once I was back in my own garden I noticed I had a harlequin ladybird larvae on me, I knew there was blackfly and greenfly on the runner beans so I thought that would be a good place to relocate him.  I didn’t expect him to start eating them straight away.  I have never seen them feeding before πŸ™‚

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 23

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 πŸ™‚

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 πŸ™‚