Wild life in the garden, or around!

Lovely, and I do envy you, I saw a live hedgehog in the forest a couple of months ago, or rather Jules found but darent touch it, but before that the last live one was when Greyhound Lira was alive. More than 15 years ago. Can’t understand it there is plenty of ground cover here. :roll_eyes:

Where we are, it seems pretty variable from year to year, and yet we have plenty of places for them to hide over the winter. Some years there are adults, others not, and we can’t really figure out why. This year has been exceptional to actually be able to see young out and about, although we did find one dead adult in the spring in the open after it warmed up suddenly and then temperatures dropped again almost as suddenly.
There was another baby hedgehog around until a few weeks ago, bigger than the one in the video, seemingly independent, but it seems to have disappeared, possibly predated.

Pleased to report we’ve got 2 of our usual glow-worm visitors… hoping for a few more in the coming days.

Some guests came for lunch - ants were on the menu !
Another pair of birds who have successfully reared and fledged at least one chick this year :+1:


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Glad I re-read that. at first I thought you said ‘and were on the menu’ :roll_eyes:

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Sadly no photo… but just mentioning that it seems to be Flying-Ant-Day today… !!

Trouble is… wildlife and human-way-of-life are often uneasy bedfellows…

The badger is now a repeat visitor. He snuffles around a bit, and then upends the squirrel nut box and eats the lot.

IMG_0569

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Sort-of wild life, these horses are kept running freely in a very large area and not simply a paddock by a local farmer.

Horse play 1 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr

Horse play 2 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr


Horse play 3
by Anton Ertl, on Flickr

Horse play 4 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr

Horse play 5 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr

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(Yes, I know it’s totally different… but …)
These lovely photos remind me of my time in Devon when Dad would take us all out for a picnic on the moors… and we would see the wild ponies… magical!

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Favorite butterfly…the echinops are a magnet

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Great photo… !!
These are really beautiful butterflies… and there was one wafting across the meadow where we were enjoying 4th July apple-pie with our American neighbours.

I agree - aren’t they wonderful. Scarce swallowtail - in fact round here (L&G) they are anything but! Mine love the verbena bonariensis.

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I was so excited when I first saw them and identified them as “scarce” and we’ve got 'em! Huh… then I realised the truth… anything but scarce… we call them shuttlecocks as that’s what they remind us of when they waft here and there…
The other Common Swallowtail also visits us regularly… in fact both sorts seem to be out and about at the same time of year…
(this is not my photo)
image
Incidentally… has anyone seen any small blues lately… saw a couple early Spring but nothing after that. I’m leaving the ivy untouched, especially for them… and crossing my fingers…

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Haven’t seen any this year so far Stella, and we usually get loads.

Hmm… hope this is just a hiccup… perhaps we’ll see clouds of them before too long…

We saw them in spring, but not since :slightly_frowning_face:

The thing that loves our verbena bonariensis is the humming bird moth. They turn up late afternoon, and we love them. Can’t pull up a verbena seedling because of it so they are everywhere now!

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I’ve had one daily for the last week or so in the lavender by the terrace. I love them!

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Twice a day I sweep the surface of the swimming pond with a net, and then turn the contents out onto a tin tray to search through with a twig and return the animal life to the pond.

It is fascinating to see how the year, and thus the ‘catch’ progresses. A few months ago I caught numerous tiny newts that had been basking near the surface before being taught by their parents to dive at any disturbance. That said I did catch one adult newt, just once, he must have been asleep. :thinking:

Also a few tiny tadpoles, difficult to spot in the debris because they don’t always move, and difficult to remove because there is nothing to get hold of, I used to scoop them with a leaf into the palm of my other hand.

The some really, really big tadpoles with enormous heads and at least 5 cms long. Mostly they wriggled, alerting me to their presence, and were comparativley easy to coax on board for the return trip. These have continued almost to the present, the last one was only 2 days ago, aren’t they supposed to be all grown up and gone by now?

Finally, the beetles. mainly water boatmen but sometimes longish black segmented beings. So many of them that I felt confident they really were meant to be aquatic, and returned them.

Today, nothing, but yesterday something that certainly wasn’t supposed to be water borne. A bright green grasshopper. No trouble picking him off the tray but once on my hand he didn’t want to leave, I had to gently coax him onto a nearby tree.

No snakes, they are far too wary of being caught and, in any case, I would easily spot them on the surface and steer away. :wink: :grinning:

A few pictures of Female Glow-worms one is about stab a large slug

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