Just Looking

Yesterday morning I had another chance to add Ring Ouzel to the 5MR list, as Mark Andrews found another at the same area on Aylestone Meadows as the weekend bird. Seeing it was another matter, as just like the first it was quick to scuttle out of view and become lost in the scrub further back. But I did get views, not the best but good enough. You think the record shots from a couple of posts ago were shocking, what about this ....

Look at that full crop grainyness, but at least you can see it's a Blackbird with a white bib! Singing Cetti's and Sedge Warblers were good to pick up whilst there too. Whilst I'm at it, here's a couple of more obliging but less interesting grey birds from the site ....

Shortly afterwards I headed up to Kinchley Lane, Swithland Res to meet up with Adrian Russell and show him a couple of the recent larval finds that he'd not seen as yet. We soon found a few mines of Elachista regificella, and an obligatory wall search produced a few bits ....

Taleporia tubulosa

Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella

One of the whites. Probably.

It was a bit parky, overcast and didn't look like the sun would break through. We next headed to the site for Infurcitinea argentimaculella, and then on to Charnwood Lodge where we had a damned good but unsuccessful search for Dahlica inconspicuella. Whilst there, I managed to grab a couple of shots of a very active jumping spider, which looks absolutely right and fits the habitat for Pseudeuophrys erratica and gained some confirmatory comments on a British Spiders facebook group ....

Back at home, a couple of vegetative bits of note. We have a large flowering cherry on the front garden, with big blousy pink blossom. It's been here since the house was built before we moved in. It's grown pretty big over the years, and we had to have it cut back a bit in 2019, but I'd never noticed anything odd about the tree before. It throws up a lot of suckers from a couple of big exposed roots, which I usually trim back at some point, but this year something odd has sprouted ....

Here's the pink blossom that is just coming up to it's best all over the tree now ....

And here's a bit of blossom that has appeared from a root sucker ....

It is clearly a cultivated specimen grafted onto some sort of wild cherry root stock, but I honestly can't say that that has ever been evident before. There was no sign of grafting on the young tree, although we moved here in 1994 so it's a long while to think back.

Also, remember back in January when I was convinced that there was no Holly in the square, just before finding a bit. Well I found this sprouting the garden at the weekend!

We've never grown any Holly in the garden and none of the neighbours have any that I can see. This is right under the line where a bird could sit on the fence and drop a dump of undigested seed.

 

This evening I've been out for a walk along the lane wielding my sweep net. I had two particular species in mind, Brassica Shieldbug which I missed and Woundwort Shieldbug which I found. Eventually, after sweeping loads of White Dead-nettle. Pied Shieldbugs were much more numerous!

I've also ended up with a good range of Hemiptera and Coleoptera in pots to have a good look at and increase the square list a bit more.

All The Bs

The Bs in question through this post being bats, blossom, beer, barbeque, beetle.

Last evening after posting, I went down to join the family females watching Jesus Christ Superstar the stage show. Luckily I was distracted by the sight of the first bats of the year hawking outside the front window. When I nipped out to check the moth traps, one was swooping around very low over the garden. I didn't bother checking them with the detector - every one I've ever checked here has been a standard 45k Pipistrelle.

The moth trap was a little better, not so much in numbers but at least some NFY species starting to turn up.

Oak-tree Pug

Oak Nycteoline

Least Black Arches

Remember early last year when our neighbours had a lovely big plum tree cut down? Turned out the neighbours were worried about some minor subsidence of their conservatory. The photos from then showed our large flowering cherry. That was actually starting to get too big for it's own good and we had it pruned later in the year. Today it was just about in full bloom and looking okay - at least it wasn't completely decimated ... or felled!

We've also got another blossoming tree in the garden that we acquired last year, albeit still a spindly twig in a pot. It's a peach that should produce some fruit. Except that so far this year I've not seen a single bee or other insect go anywhere near it. Today I spent a few minutes carefully brushing and cross-contaminating the flowers - no idea if that will make any difference!

I confused myself briefly when I noticed Peach Blossom in the labels index .....

A cursory look at the Hart's-tongue Fern at the bottom of the garden for any sign of either Psychoides sp. produced an early instar surprise ..

Common Footman

And then the rest of the day was taken up drinking beer and barbequeing various meats and halloumi skewers ...

Just like buses, a couple of Ravens soared overhead for a few minutes but nothing new birdwise. A Holly Blue butterfly fluttered through, the first here for the year. Later this evening, the first of another garden pests appeared ...

Vine Weevil

And then sitting out this evening with a coffee, the bats were out in force and the skies looked very promising indeed. It was warm, still and with a bit of cloud cover. I felt it was worth going to the effort of running both traps, especially as the forecast was for a dry night with min temp c8deg.

22W Synergetic / 12W Blacklight LED

125W MV

And then whilst I've been typing this, it has absolutely hammered it down with rain .......

Plumming New Depths

I don't want anyone to think that I think I am a perfect neighbour, 'cause I'm absolutely sure I'm not. I'm sure some neighbours would prefer that I didn't run light traps at night and loiter around my own garden with a camera. I'm sure some would prefer that I didn't look through my kitchen window at the bird feeder and adjacent scrubby embankment with binoculars. And I'm absolutely sure that some of our neighbours would prefer that we didn't have a cat (and to be honest I'm on their side on that one!). But .... some of our neighbours do things that really piss me off. Inconsiderate parking, footballs banging against our fence, replacing fence panels that are their responsibility with shit ones with the duff side facing our way. Etc.

One of our neighbours has managed to right royally piss me off in the last couple of days. Here's a couple of snaps of our flowering cherry tree at the front of the house.

05/05/2018

13/04/2019

Can you spot the difference (apart from our tree not being in full blossom yet!)?

Yes, there is now an open space to the left of the boundary wall where up until 12/04/2019 there was a lovely fruiting plum tree. In fact, before I left home on Friday morning I even commented to Nichola how the plum tree and our cherry tree were coming on nicely for blossom. I got home later in the day and found that the neighbour had had the tree completely felled and dug out by contractors. I am sure they have some perfectly rational reason for this, but FFS why do it in spring when the tree is just coming into blossom. I don't think anything was nesting in the tree, but I can't be certain.

Anyway, you will realise that there is a completely selfish reason why I liked that tree being there, and of course it is because it was a good host plant for a number of moth species, not least Grapholita funebrana which had just started turning up in the garden trap. I also thought that this tree was the source of my VC55 first Grapholita lobarzweski last year, but it seems that the info on UK Moths is incorrect and this species is actually on apple in the UK rather than plum. Luckily the neighbours at the back have not cut down their apple tree. Yet.

This has been one of those weekends when family committments and/or indifferent weather conspire against me and I've not had a chance to get out. The garden trap has also been pathetic with the very cold nights. Yesterday I knocked up a 2 x 22W synergetic rig to trial, but until we get some half decent conditions it's not worth running.

I have had a larval rearing success though ....

Mullein Moth - larva collected in May last year and reared on buddleia.

Life in the garden - 27/04/2008

This weekend has seen some excellent warm weather, and not surprisingly a few more things have started to appear:


Noticed the first wasps of the year this weekend, presume they are Common Wasp. This one is feeding on spurge pollen.


Our cherry blossom tree is, well, blossoming. To be honest, I personally don't like the pale pink blossom on our tree and would prefer a white-blossoming plum or apple. However, this tree has hosted a fair few breeding moths so I definitely like the tree itself.


The moth trap attracts all manner of invertebrates, which I generally ignore. This weekend brought the first proper crane-flies in. I hate these leggy twats - only good thing about them is that the larvae make excellent Starling and Rook food!

The fine weather was brought to an abrupt halt late this afternoon though when the skies darkened and a monsoon-like spell of torrential rain commenced. Our garden has poor drainage at the best of times, and is often boggy to say the least in the winter, but tonight we have a new pond.


No personalised flood warnings from the Environment Agency, bastards!

As usual around this time of year, heavy rain sparks a mass exodus of frogs from the neighbouring garden pond into our garden and beyond. They make a mad dash across the lawn and seem to disappear for a few weeks, then gradually start returning to sit by the moth trap all night getting fat.