Summer 5

And now for something completely different . . .

Saturday 18th July, 2015.

Sunday was one of those “I can’t believe it” days.  After waiting for weeks hoping to see a juvenile goldfinch, not one but two visited the feeder today.  And it definitely wasn’t the same one twice.  The first one arrived in the morning before we left for the tip with the recycling stuff.  It had recently fledged and was still begging for food from an adult when I first saw it in the tree by the feeder.  It kept moving and I only got one slightly blurred photo before it disappeared.  A few minutes later I saw it again, foraging for food on the ground under the sunflower seed feeder.

After lunch I noticed another juvenile goldfinch perched on top of the feeding station.  It seemed confused by the weird contraption and all the other birds, and fluttered around for a while before finally managing to land on one of the peanut feeders.  I got a clear view through the dining room window and could see that it was older than our visitor in the morning.

We had another wet Monday and I spent some time watching birds outside the kitchen window.  The lawn is a bit patchy after the warm spell at the end of June but the July rain has stopped the brown patches from getting too large and unsightly.  A yellow hypericum is providing a splash of colour, along with the ubiquitous centranthus, foxgloves and purple toadflax. There is a hypericum hidcote in the “shrubbery” on the bottom terrace of the garden  which doesn’t get enough sun to flower well - but the  layered cutting which I moved to the back garden years ago is doing well.

I rather like the crumpled edges to the petals.

This purple toadflax self seeds and comes up in all sorts of inappropriate places.  It would be a problem in a tidy garden but I encourage it because it is a favourite of the small worker bumblebees.

I didn’t think it would be possible for another bird to upstage the juvenile goldfinch sightings - but I was wrong, as usual.  Just after lunch, Tim called me to the kitchen saying “Come and look at this - there is something big on the feeder.  Be careful not to frighten it.”  I crept to the door into the kitchen with my camera and was flabbergasted - it was a woodpecker!  I had never seen one before.  I took some photos - checked on the internet - and then emailed a photo to Manx BirdLife to ask for confirmation of my suspicions.  I was right,  It was a great spotted woodpecker and apparently they are not very common on the Island.

The great spotted was smaller than I expected.  One website described it as being about the same size as a blackbird another compared it with a starling.  The nice Irish lady at the pet shop had told me that she had friends in Andreas who had woodpeckers visiting their feeders - but I never expected to see one in our garden.  It returned twice on Tuesday.  The first visit was just before midday and then I saw it again at about eight o’clock in the evening.  It was in a better position to photograph but the light was so bad that the camera could only manage a very slow speed using the zoom, and woodpeckers move their heads all the time.  All the shots were blurred.   I was tempted to include one because it was the only one which showed the bird from the side so that you could see the the black and white spotted wing but I got some better shots later in the week.

No woodpecker sighting on Wednesday but that may be because I mowed the grass and the noise of the mower may have frightened it.  But it could have visited the feeder while I was busy doing something else.

I did see some butterflies though.  There was a small tortoiseshell on the meadowsweet up by the summerhouse while I was mowing.  It disappeared while I was fetching my camera.  I did see some other butterflies later - at least two meadow browns, a very tatty red admiral and an unidentified white in the back garden and a speckled wood near the drive.  I got a few more hummingbird hawkmoth photos too. These weird moths seem to be almost more common than butterflies this year.  I think this is the best photo so far.

On Thursday the woodpecker was back and has been seen three or four times every day since then.  We have to creep quietly into the kitchen if we want to make tea in case he (or she) is feeding and we frighten him away.  I got some much better photos of him - showing back and side views.

Initially I thought he (?) was a male because females have black heads but, after reading a bit more about them, I realised that our woodpecker is a juvenile.  Adult males only have a red patch at the back of the head (on the nape).  The juveniles all have the red patch on the top of the head and a paler undertail than the adults.

After corresponding with Manx BirdLife about the identification of the woodpecker, I agreed to take part in their Garden Birdwatch.  I am only going to start after our Canadian family visit at the beginning of August because I won’t have as much time as usual to gaze out of the window counting birds during the next three weeks.

The garden is getting more and more overgrown.  It always does at this time of year but is even worse than usual because I have been doing more vacuuming, window cleaning and tidying and less gardening than usual.  There used to be a path along the bottom of this retaining wall but it is completely choked with a mess of penstemon, centranthus, spiraea and lady’s mantle as well as overhanging plants from the bed above.  I will let them finish flowering before cutting them back.

There is a bit of a lull in new flowers.  The main flush of roses is over and the plants that flower in late summer are just starting to open.  This is one of the pink mophead hydrangeas near the drive . . .

. . . and here is the first flower to start opening on the echinops.

There are also some flowers on the mauve erigeron.  

Thinking about the erigeron reminded me of the plants on the bank outside our kitchen window in Natal.  The bank was covered with a creeping ficus and maidenhair ferns but there were also daisy-like erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane or Santa Barbara daisy) and some pretty blue flowers which were probably a type of aristea.  I wasn’t able to identify plants so easily in those "pre-digital camera and internet" days.  Which reminds me of a bumper sticker that I saw in the Co op car park.  It read “I don’t need Google because my girlfriend knows everything”!  It crossed my mind that the reason his girlfriend knew everything was that she used Google.  

While I was in the back garden yesterday searching for non-existent butterflies, I noticed that the crocosmia flowers were opening.  No need to wait for a soft light to photograph them.  They were glowing in the strong sunlight.

After those unexpected bird sightings earlier in the week, I have been wondering . . . what next? Perhaps a sighting of fairies at the bottom of the garden! Although any fairies would probably have been blown away in the strong wind today. On second thoughts, we do have fairies . . . three rather sweet little miniature roses called The Fairy. This is a magnified photo of one of the flowers.

PS A “what next”involving a little siskin happened while I was finishing this post.  There was a loud noise which sounded suspiciously like a bird hitting a window . . . and hitting it hard.  I looked out and saw a siskin lying on the steps outside the living room window.  I thought it was dead and went out to pick it up.  By the time I got there it was moving but appeared to be concussed.  I carried it inside to keep it warm and see whether it would recover.  I ended up holding it longer than I intended because I wanted to put it up in the mesh bowl on the feeder (out of reach of neighbouring felines) but I had to wait because the woodpecker was busy eating peanuts.  

The little bird just sat in the bowl for ages and I wasn’t very optimistic about its chances of recovery.  I thought it might be stimulated if other siskins were around so I put a few sunflower seeds in the bowl.  Then I started preparing supper and the next time I looked out of the window the little bird had gone.  I can’t remember ever being so glad not to see a bird.