Sparrowhawk Attack

I was engaged in the mind numbing and boring task of cleaning the cooker this morning when I glanced out of the kitchen window to see a female sparrowhawk stealthily and speedily approaching the bird feeders from the top of the garden. As she reached the feeding station she almost seemed to hover for a second as her outstretched feet and claws made contact with an empty space where milliseconds earlier a bird had been feeding. She made a circuit of the feeders and then perched on the roof of next door's extension surveying the scene of her near miss. It all happened so quickly I am not sure what species had such a narrow escape. It was amusing to see a wood pigeon, rather stupidly I thought, still feeding on the grass under the feeders.

A magical moment which illustrates one of the things I love about birds, or any other aspect of natural history, whatever you are doing or wherever you are, something exciting or unusual can suddenly occur.

Moths and Mumruffins

The only new species for the garden from last Sunday's moth trapping session was a pretty micro moth called a Chequered Fruit-tree tortrix. Numbers of the dreaded yellow underwings are slowly beginning to increase and Lesser Yellow Underwing was new for this year. I caught another orange swift - this time a male and in brighter orange colours. No photo though as he was very worn and I let him go straightaway.

Here's a photo of the moth trap ready for action. I usually put the trap on the patio but one warm humid evening I will try and place it further up the garden on the second lawn as more species seem to be attracted to that area including a great many shield bugs.



Cropped photo of Chequered Fruit-tree tortrix (there are several tortrix species that look very similar so I hope my id is correct!).



Small Square-spot (cropped)



I also found a black sexton burying beetle (Nicrophorus humator) in the bottom of the trap. This is one of the species of beetles that bury small mammal and bird corpses and lay their eggs on the dead animal so that the larvae have plenty of food when they hatch. Gruesome!!!

This is a photo of one bumbling over the carpet that I caught in April. I let last week's beetle go as it kept falling on its back in the collecting pot and, apart from it looking very undignified, I felt quite sorry for it.



Summary of Moth Catch

Sunday, 15th August
9.00p.m. until dawn
Minimum Temperature 11.3 degrees centigrade
Actinic 15w Skinner Light Trap

Macros

Flame Shoulder x 2
Large Yellow Underwing x 5
Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing x 4
Lesser Yellow Underwing x 1 New for Year
Small Square-spot x 1
Willow Beauty x 2
Shuttle-shaped Dart x 4
Dark Arches x 1
Marbled Beauty x 4
Straw Underwing x 1
Copper Underwing x 1
Orange Swift x 1
Common Carpet x 1

Micro

Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix x 1 New For Garden


Garden Update

Have had lots of visits this week from a party of six or more mumruffins or long-tailed tits. Mumruffin is one of many regional names for long-tailed tits and I think it is a great word for these pretty, cute, little birds looking like pink, white and black cotton wool balls with constantly twitching long tails. The mumruffins are with a mixed flock of blue, great and coal tits and they are all a joy to watch as they flit to and fro between the trees and shrubs and feeders. Apart from these delightful visitors bird numbers are slowly starting to drop. I did see a fledgling wood pigeon today accompanied by its parents as it shuffled around the lawn. I have been keeping my eyes peeled for any unusual visitors passing through on migration - no luck so far.

I spotted a hornet in the garden on Monday but when I realised it was becoming as interested in me as I was in it, I beat a hasty retreat! The buddleia flowers have failed to attract any red admirals or peacocks although we are still seeing plenty of large and small whites, gatekeepers, holly blues and speckled woods. I have noticed a real lack of dragon or damselflies in the garden this year. In the past we have seen several a week but this year I have only seen two dragonflies and they had both flown off before I could get outside to try and identify them.

A Stroll Around My Garden - Part 2

To continue with my garden tour...

Climbing up two stepsfrom the main lawn we enter an area with a second lawn surrounded by borders and with a path meandering along the middle.



The borders here consist mainly of shrubs and trees - azaleas, bay, a few conifers, lilac, rowan, viburnum, smoke tree, buddleia, choisya, cotoneaster, holly, hawthorn, lilac, yucca, hypericum - all chosen for their flowers, leaf colour or berries. The path passes under an arch covered in mile a minute which houses an old kettle once used as a nesting site for robins but now used as a plucking post by local sparrowhawks. There is an arbour covered in honeysuckle with a bench and a bed in the centre of the lawn contains a flowering cherry and a rhodendron. Although there is a raised bed which contains osteospermums and lilies of the valley, annuals and perennials struggle here as it is so shady. I call this my "green garden" because of all the different shades of green in the leaves of the trees and shrubs.

We also planted a large eucalyptus tree - now the tallest tree in the garden - which was probably an unwise decision as I have since read that these trees only have shallow roots and so every time we have strong winds I live in dire dread it will topple over!















The path continues up a few more steps and to the left is the wildflower meadow. The first year after we sowed this area we had lots of poppies, the following year many oxeye daisies and each year the flower species dominating has changed. This spring we had mainly red campion flowers followed by St Johns Wort. Other flowers in far lesser quantities include bluebells, cowslips, ribwort plaintain, scabious, knapweed, tufted vetch, white campion and a few others. No sign of ragged robin, one of my favourite plants (!) this year. We use a scythe to cut down the flowers in the early autumn and we may rake over a small area this year in the hope that some of the poppies may return next year.

To the right of the path is a small garden which my son used to look after when he was little which contains a small pond, some heathers, Rosa rugosa and dwarf conifers.

Just a few photos of the wildflower meadow as I have already posted many in previous blog postings. The last photo was taken in May.








Behind the wildflower meadow is a small wooded area consisting of 8 silver birches and 2 rowans with an understorey of hazel, blackthorn, alder and elder. Bluebells and wood anemones carpet the woodland floor in spring (see final photo). We have made a log pile to attrach hibernating hedgehogs and minibeasts and there is a bat box in one of the birches (I don't think the latter has ever been used although we do see the odd pipistrelle in the garden).

We have planted a hedgerow of native shrubs in front of the wooden fence at the end of the garden but as it receives little sunlight it has never done as well as we had hoped. There are several bramble and nettle patches in this area of the garden to attract butterflies.















The Future

As mentioned earlier I would love to reintroduce a small vegetable plot and would also like to add a rose garden and some fruit trees - despite my son and daughter proclaiming they still want to play badminton (they haven't for 2 years!) - I can see the main lawn shrinking in size over the next few years. I would also love a greenhouse but not sure where I could fit one in!

Species seen in the Garden

Over the years we have had 52 species of bird visit the garden. Several of these were "one-off" visits such as red-legged partridge, tree creeper and reed bunting or seen on migration - garden warbler, redstart, whitethroat, pied and spotted flycatcher.

We have seen 6 species of mammal and 3 species of amphibian, 19 species of butterfly and I have trapped 89 species of moth since last August.

When I get chance I will add species lists on the right hand side of my blog home page.

Apologies if I have posted photos that you have seen before and I hope you have enjoyed the tour of my garden.

A Stroll Around My Garden - Part 1

I thought I would take you on a tour of our garden over the next couple of blog postings and tell you a little bit more about it.

When we bought the house the garden was mainly lawn and flower beds with hardly any shrubs or trees and the top third of the garden was totally overgrown and contained a huge shed which had seen better days.

We started to plant shrubs and trees straight away and added a pond. We took down the shed and cleared the top of the garden and turned it into a vegetable patch with a fruit cage. We were almost self sufficient in vegetables and used to freeze a lot and make pickles, jams and chutneys. Several years later when the children arrived we found it difficult to maintain the vegetable area as it was very time consuming so we turned the top area of the garden into a mini wildflower meadow with a wooded area behind. I must admit now the children are grown up I would like to find an area of the garden where we could grow a few vegetables again. I do grow a few herbs on the patio and last year grew pumpkins.

Closest to the house is a patio area which is block paved and houses the rabbit hutch and run, table and chairs and a barbecue. The walls at each end are covered in ivy, clematis and climbing hydrangea and I grow annuals in pots in the summer replacing the annuals with violas, pansies and primulas in the autumn. We have had wrens and blackbirds nesting in the ivy and this year a wren nested in the base of one of last year's hanging baskets - see earlier blog posting.







I bought this Christmas Tree when the children were small and it was only about 6 inches tall. Every Christmas we put it in the porch and decorate it with miniature silver decorations. I was really upset last autumn when it appeared to be dying with the needles turning brown and dropping off. We repotted it and have been feeding it and it looks a lot healthier this summer with lots of new growth so hopefully I will be able to bring it indoors again this Christmas.













Clematis growing on the house wall in flower in May





Now the clematis is covered in attractive seedheads





Looking through the arch covered in jasmine towards the rest of the garden



The border to the right of the main lawn is planted with shrubs - bamboo, buddleia, hollies and mock orange.

The border on the left hand-side of the lawn is a perennial bed. We have planted lots of different species so that we get some colour throughout the summer. At the moment the border is full of golden rod which the hoverflies and bees love and phlox together with cosmos,cone flowers, lavender, dahlias, valerian, monkshood etc.









I bought this plant with small blue flowers from Hidcote.

















We leave the seedheads in the perennial border throughout the autumn and winter for the birds to feed on and insects to hibernate. They also look beautiful covered in frost or snow.

The whitebeam tree pictured below was a foot high sapling when we moved in. This is the tree which houses the nest box with webcam where the blue tits nested earlier in the year. In the early autumn it is covered in berries which are soon eaten by the blackbirds and wood pigeons.



Ferns grow in a shady corner below the whitebeam. (The bird table has been moved here temporarily as I only use it to feed the birds in the winter just using feeders in the summer).





We kept quite a large area of lawn for the children when they were younger for sandpits, paddling pools, swings, slides and climbing frames. When they got older the lawn was used for football and badminton but now they are grown up I would like to make the lawn area smaller perhaps creating more flowers or even a vegetable plot!

At the end of the lawn is the pond - our second. We replaced the earlier smaller pond with this version a few years ago. To the left is a small bog garden which is full of yellow flags in the spring. Behind the pond is a rockery which desperately needs replanting as we seem to have lost all the rockery plants just leaving a few heathers and primulas.









These are more pictures of the pond and area nearby. I took some of the photos earlier in the year when the azaleas and rhododendrons were flowering. My husband has been giving this area of the garden its annual "haircut" recently and the shrubs look awful and there is a huge pile of prunings waiting to be shredded so it was hard to get an up to date photo! We don't keep fish in the pond although I would love some sticklebacks if I could find out where to buy them. I have seen toads around this area and we get a lot of frogs and frogspawn and, as mentioned in an earlier post, common newts. Grey Herons have visited in the past and we have had annual visits each spring from a pair of mallard. This was wonderful as they used to waddle up to the back door looking for bread. Unfortunately, my husband decided they were only visiting to hoover up the frogspawn and tadpoles and used to chase them away.








This is "Matilda" inherited from a great-aunt. Matilda used to sit on top of a stone bird bath shaped like a shell but when I collected her the bird bath had cracked.



The garden is abour 145 feet by 30 feet (44 x 9 metres) and in my next posting I will show you the area around the second lawn, the mini wildflower meadow and wooded area.