Archive for the 'In the garden' Category

We apologise for the loss of signal…

Posted by on August 24th 2009 in In the garden
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Life's been a bit full of other stuff for a while now, so the blogging has had to take a back-seat for a few weeks. I'll try to catch up over the next few days, starting now... This year has been a good one for the number of butterflies in our garden, but not so good for the range of species. So far, the list of species found is as follows:
  • Small Skipper Thymelicus sylvestris
  • Large White Pieris brassicae
  • Small White Pieris rapae
  • Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus
  • Painted Lady Cynthia cardui
  • Small Tortoiseshell Aglaise urticae
  • Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta
  • Peacock Inachis io
  • Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria
  • Wall Lasiommata megera
  • Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus
  • Meadow Brown Maniola jurtina
  • Small Heath Coenonympha pamphilus
That's not a bad list for an urban garden in the Midlands, but there are a few notable absences - here's a list of species that we usually see here but which haven't put in an appearance so far this year:
  • Large Skipper Ochlodes venata
  • Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni
  • Green-veined White Pieris napi
  • Orange Tip Anthocharis cardamines
  • Small Copper Lycaena phlaeas
  • Common Blue Polyommatus icarus
A few hours with the camera resulted in the following pics of some of the more obliging specimens:

EDIT: Just to let you know that Old Winter has blogged about his butterflies today at http://oldwinteramble.blogspot.com/2009/08/butterflies-july-aug-2009.html

I am NOT a wildlife repair expert, Brian!

Posted by on August 17th 2009 in In the garden

I was well into our garden butterfly survey (more on this in a later post) when I was interrupted again by another live contribution from next-door. Not content with his donation of a perfectly good young hedgehog ("it was curled up in a ball and I thought it was dead, so I brought it to you to see if you could look after it"), he's now given me this poor critter:

 

 

 

 

It seems to be intact with no broken bones as far as we can tell, but it's weak, flightless and has no parents around. We'll do what we can for it, but I suspect that we'll have to let nature take charge soon.

Cute

Posted by on August 14th 2009 in Camera kit, In the garden, Shiny new kit
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Just a quick snapshot with the new lens:

 

Eyes

Posted by on July 6th 2008 in In the garden, Pics
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Here's a pic of one of our resident wild creatures. Seems like he's got a liking for gammon rind, as well as a body-clock that's well out of sync with the rest of his mates. Click on him to see the full picture.  

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