Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Saturday 12 September 2009

Life in the garden, 12/09/2009

Nichola was working today, leaving me with the kids who were happy to play out with their mates in the glorious hot sunshine. I also had a few bit to do, but as some of this included basic gardening chores I spent time pottering about the garden with one camera or other.

Birdwise the only interest was a singing Chiffchaff (making it seem even more summery), Bullfinch and Goldfinch amongst the commoner visitors. I kept looking to the wide open blue space above but saw precisely zero hirundines, swifts or buzzards of any variety.

Butterflies were back; I saw Comma, Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Large White and Peacock all feeding on a large overhanging buddleia of some sort.









The same bush was also alive with bees of various sorts.


Busy


Buzzy

Quite a few hoverflies in the garden today aswell on various flowers.


Eupeodes corollae maybe


Rhingia campestris


Lobelia

Whilst out there I found a freshly dead shrew - pretty sure it is a Common Shrew. Couldn't see any obvious damage, though a cat still seems the mostly likely reason for it being on the other side of life.


c100mm nose to tail, c60mm body length alone


Just about showing red-tipped teeth, typical of the, er, red-tipped tooth shrews

The boys were excited to find some larvae, these turned out to be Rose Sawfly Arge ochropus



The garden is pretty much covered with spider webs at the moment, on every plant/shrub and in virtually every open space between sprigs. Mainly Garden Spiders, appropriately.





In between, the mightly LCFC scored another home win - it's now a year since we last lost a home game in the league. Warm clear sunny days are great, the inevitable clear cool nights are crap for moth trapping .......

2 comments:

http://abebedorespgondufo.blogs.sapo.pt/ said...

Good blog.

Anonymous said...

Shrews live life to the max. Very rapid heart-rate. They really do the old rock and roll - live fast die young. I found a Pygmy Shrew last autumn in a similar condition.