Pottering About

Today was my first full day back at work since 10th January. I did spend a few hours working from home whilst I was off, and went back on short days last week, but it's not the same. Physically fine, it's more about remembering how to use my brain to juggle several things/people at the same time. Anyway, whilst I was there it was lovely and sunny. As I left it looked like it might cloud over a bit. As I got home it got duller .....

There was enough time to go out and have a look around, but with the sun gone and the light going I decided to not bother and just had a potter about in the garden instead. It seems like it's been quite a while since I actually had a poke around in the garden with the camera, and I was reminded of a few things ..... like .....

It's been a few years since I bothered properly looking at the slugs in the garden, and there may well be new species that I've not seen here before. I've not even scrutinised the 'yellow slugs' properly since the arrival and spread of Irish Yellow Slug in the county. I found a clump today but typically they remained scrunched up and I couldn't coax one to properly stretch out for a better look. I'm pretty sure that all of my garden yellows are now Irish Yellow Slug, but need to check. They're not going anywhere, I just need to remember to get myself in gear and go out collecting a load of slugs from the garden one warm damp night to properly look at them all.

Ambigolimax sp. - 'Greenhouse Slug' or 'Balkan Three Banded Slug' ??

Limacus sp. - (probably) Irish Yellow Slug

This photo also shows how productive lifting a pot can be, if you can be arsed to catch and check all the flat-backed millipedes, woodlice and earthworms ......

Pot and slab lifting also produced a couple of usual suspects.

Leistus fulvibarbis

Orchesella cincta

An out of focus Orchesella villosa

It was around the time of the last couple of shots that I remembered a couple of other things: springtails are massively abundant and ought to be looked for/at more than they have been, and bloody hell I can't actually see and focus on the camera screen properly when shooting hand-held anymore and can't see if the subject is in focus. I need specs.

Other bits didn't need looking for, they were just there.

Brown-lipped Banded Snail

Oddly coloured Green Shieldbug

Marchantia polymorpha - all over the place in the garden now

Ubiquitous Scarlet Lily Beetle - back again to destroy my Snake's-head Fritillaries

I noticed that there are more white Fritillaries this year

In other news, that grubby female Psychid from yesterday is still alive and kicking ... and not egg-laying.

Friday pm / Saturday am

After another busy week, it was good to find myself in the position of having plenty of bits to round-up from the last 20 hours! First of all, when I got home from work yesterday there were a few bits in the garden worth getting the camera out for ..

female Tawny Mining Bee - at least 3 seen

Eristalis tenax - sunbathing on the wall

cultivated Snake's Head Fritilary - always good to see these out each spring

It was then a bit of a mad rush to sort a couple of things out. Firstly, the boys are away camping with the scouts this weekend. This time they are at the Oaks in Charnwood site - which rather conveniently is directly adjacent to Charnwood Lodge so I decided to bung 3 traps into the car along with the boys stuff. The plan was offload kids, offload traps, and then enjoy a rare peaceful and relaxed evening pub meal with Nichola before returning to check traps and either pull in or top up gennie.

Phase one was done and dusted by 18:30 - kids safely handed over to the camp leaders and out of our care. Hurrah! Phase two - drive around to Charnwood Lodge and deploy traps. Bumped into Ian Merrill on the way down - this is one of the most unspoilt and remote reserves in Leicestershire so not sure what he thought when a loaded Vectra estate piled along the track. After a quick walk to show Nichola the site and look at the camp from the other end of the field, the traps were out and gennie up and running. Phase three - we headed to the Forest Rock pub and enjoyed a really great meal and a couple of shandys. Never been there before but it was just the job for what we wanted. Before I burble on a bit more, here's some photographic interlude ...

Wood Sorrel - loads growing in the undergrowth and, like this one, in tree trunk basins

Yellow dot = camp site
Green dot = trapping area within Gisborne's Gorse, the garden/woodland within Charnwood Lodge
Red dot = the Forest Rock pub

We got back to the trap site at 21:20 - all looking good so I intended to fill up the gennie and leave it until dawn. As I was making this decision, a number of torches and voices appeared along the track heading toward me - the scouts were out on a night-hike. 'Hi Dad' was the most prominent voice. Bloody typical - one minute I'm chilled and mellow and the next I am having to give a demonstration and talk to 20 odd small boys about moths. Seriously though it was a pleasure; certainly it was easier than a couple of weeks ago when I took some of the Barn Owl pellets to show the scouts what they were and what was in them. When I asked what did they think was in the pellets, one kid accurately ventured bones, another one suggested fur, and then it got silly with other boys asking of there was any poo and testicles in them which set the tone for the session. Later when I asked if there were any more questions they all put their hands up, I said 'any more questions that are not about poo and testicles' and they all put their hands down ....

By 22:00 the scouts had departed, leaving me with 3 traps surrounded by trampled sheets. I straightened everything up, filled up the gennie and left the traps to it. Back after dawn this morning at 06:30, and the first pleasing thing was the the traps were still on - the superb cheapo chinese 2-stroke having run 3 x 125W MV traps for over 8 hours and still going. Every trap was awash with Brindled Pugs. Plenty of stuff in all 3 traps which I'll summarise separately with a few photos hopefully.

Cheap, heavy, smelly, superb performance

Pug paradise

c60% of the catch in one trap after knocking the egg boxes into it - click for big

Charnwood Lodge - pretty much the only place in Leicestershire that looks like this - click for big

On the way home I nipped into Grove Park. Immediately on to what looked to be a first-summer Wheatear (brown flecks in mantle, brownish flight feathers). A few Lapwings there aswell, but sadly no sign of any LRPs. This site is really on its last legs now with ever-encroaching development. This is a first attempt at using the photo-merge thing on Photoshop to give an idea - click for big.

Just as I got home a heavy shower started - the garden traps are still waiting to be emptied .....

Life in the garden 09/04/2010

Our rear garden lawn is gradually sinking and the bottom half of the garden is a clay bog. On the upside, the lawn is generally unmowable until after a good couple of weeks or so of dry warm weather ..... The borders are not too bad, though neither of us bothers too much about weeding other than in occasional bursts of enthusiastic culling. As for the paved bits, I reckon its only the weeds and moss that stops the slabs from wobbling. The front 'garden' is a lot smaller than it used to be - not physically as such, but there used to be a lawn there aswell before we had an extension to the house and driveway. Now there is just a planted area around our cherry tree. The gardens are not exactly wild and unkempt, but they are not formal and neat either - somewhere in between which does mean that there are opportunities for finding all sorts of unexpected things of you have a good look. But today when I got home from work early, I wasn't searching the undergrowth - just enjoying the sunshine and have a general nose around.

One thing I noticed was some small yellow flowers growing around slabs that I couldn't remember seeing there before. When it comes to plants and flowers I am pretty much incompetent - I just can't retain an image of the structure/colour and associate it with a name in the same way that I can with relative ease for birds, moths etc. Anyway, I noticed the flowers but didn't know what they were. This prompted me to dig out the only wild flower books I have to again trawl through blindly. Whilst I had the book in hand, I recalled various people mentioning seeing Lesser Celandine recently so I looked it up. Bugger me - it was the small yellow flower I was intending to try and identify! Or at least I think so ....

Of the flowers that we have actually planted, pleasing to see that the Snake's Head Fritillaries (sourced from commercial stock) continue to thrive:

Also about were my first Peacocks of the year, with several flying around in bursts in between soaking up the sun, and also my first wasps. Also lots of big fat White-tailed and Red-tailed Bumblebees evident, plus loads of 7-Spot Ladybirds and a couple of 2-Spots.

A weakly-marked 7-Spot

The garden moth traps last night produced a total of 44 of 11sp. (125W MV 16 of 7, 80W actinic 28 of 9).

0672 Parsnip Moth (Depressaria heraclei) 1 [first for year]
0688 Agonopterix heracliana 1
1524 Emmelina monodactyla 1
1746 Shoulder Stripe (Anticlea badiata) 1
1862 Double-striped Pug (Gymnoscelis rufifasciata) 1
1917 Early Thorn (Selenia dentaria) 1 [first for year]
2182 Small Quaker (Orthosia cruda) 3
2187 Common Quaker (Orthosia cerasi) 11
2188 Clouded Drab (Orthosia incerta) 8
2190 Hebrew Character (Orthosia gothica) 13
2243 Early Grey (Xylocampa areola) 3

Early Thorn

Nothing remotely interesting bird-wise to report.