Thursday 20 July 2017

Around the Garden




 My garden has been quite a joy recently with one thing or another. It's buzzing with bees on the Lavender and Buddleia. A few self seeded plants have brought in the bees too including this wonderful purple one, I haven't been able find out what it is yet, there's some in a nearby car park so I guess it's come from there.



I left part of the flower bed by the path pretty much to itself and the Ragwort that's now growing there is full of Cinnabar Moth Caterpillars. 



My St John's Wort that appeared last year is almost taking over the Mint planter, but I love how it looks so it's staying. We planted a couple of new Buddleia this year, they're still quite small but in full flower now. The Foxgloves though are now almost flowerless.




I came home on Sunday to find my first ever Small Skipper in the garden, again loving the Lavender, it's an immensely popular plant (we just planted more in the back garden!). There's often Comma's flying around too though they rarely settle for long.



The pond has tiny snails in it now, we still need to do some work around it yet though.


My daughter found this Ruby-tailed Wasp in our hallway, beautiful colours but it was an ex wasp when it was found! I've never seen one before.


Every evening just after dark the Fox comes in the garden and cleans up around the feeder, a Squirrel comes and cleans out the peanuts every now and again and we get one or two Bats flying around the garden at dusk.




The Sparrows are constant visitors still, they love the feeders we've put up by the front door and spend a lot of time in the bird bath. 



Starlings fill the feeders in the back garden along with Collared Doves and Woodpigeons. There's been the odd visits from Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Wren, Magpies, Goldfinch and this past couple of days Blackbird and Dunnock for the first time in a while.




We've also had some amazing sightings, purely down to the fact it's so warm we have the patio doors open and I spend a lot of time stood by them sky watching! Our local Sparrowhawk flew low through the garden right in front of me last week and landed in a distant tree before spooking all the Sparrows that reside in the Conifer at the end of the houses.


Then earlier this week a large flock of Gulls - Herring and Black Headed (that I could pick out) flew in circles over the house, this is not something I see often, usually there's maybe the odd three or four passing by.


A few minutes later I was watching again, another bird flew over - a Bird of Prey but what, I got (bad) photos and checked it out with the bins, it had another bird in it's talons!! I had to check on the ID as I wasn't sure and got confirmation it was a Peregrine Falcon, a first patch tick and an amazing one!! I'm so pleased!


Not long after I watched another pair of Birds of Prey high up in the sky, the smaller one attacking the larger one and from we can tell possibly the Peregrine attacking the Buzzard. 


All that just from the garden!

12 comments:

  1. Wonderful thoughts and what an amazing day it must have been. Great photos indeed. Warm greetings to you!

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  2. Hi Pam. Nice account. The purple flower is Purple Toadflax + in my garden often get the distinctive caterpillars of Toadflax Brocade feeding on it, though is quite a scarce species, but now regular in London area.

    Your St. John's-wort is more specifically Tutsan.

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    1. That's great, thank you for your help on both plants. Definitely no caterpillars on this Toadflax though i've just checked out the Toadflax Brocade ones and they are quite beautiful.

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  3. Lovely post Pam and so good to read of all the wildlife in your garden. Lavender is very popular here too - it is a great plant to grow for pollinators. We have cinnabar moth caterpillars on Ragwort here too - in the "no mow" patch on the main lawn - I was so excited when I first spotted them :)

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    1. Thank you :) I love my Lavender, I'm looking forward to getting it established in other parts of the garden now! The caterpillars do look lovely on the Ragwort!

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  4. What a lovely garden!! You have some awesome yard birds...and other hungry critters! I see a lot of what I think is lavender the bees do love! Great choices.

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  5. I keep checking my ragwort for cinnabar caterpillars but I don't have any. I've never seen a ruby tailed wasp but I've wanted to for a long time - great to know they are around, hope the next one you see is a live one!

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    1. I hadn't thought about checking the Ragwort, I just caught them out of the corner of my eye on the way out to work! I've never heard of the wasp before we found this one, they're so beautiful!

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  6. What a great post you have lots going on in your garden, UK Hoverflies is great place to look on Facebook at all the different Hoverflies you have seen, LOADS! once you start looking at them.Peregrine Falcon great tick you did well spotting it. You have a lovely garden.
    Amanda xx

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    1. Thank you :) for a small garden it doesn't do bad! I'll check that out, there are so many different ones it's difficult to know where to start! I was really chuffed to see the Peregrine xx

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