Tuesday, 11th August, 2015
Life is slowly returning to normal after an exciting week with our Canadian daughter and granddaughters. I took very few photos after the walks just over a week ago in Maughold and at the Point of Ayre. We were rather busy and the weather wasn't great - wet and windy at times. We had two inches of rain during the first week of August. There was also an assortment of the usual dramas which always seem to occur when we have visitors - no water due to a burst pipe one night, electricity off for routine maintenance one day, one telephone refusing to work (during a phone call from the USA) due to a faulty DSL filter, trying to work out how to coax a reluctant scanner into action, thinking that the router was faulty when we lost the internet connection . . . until we got a message saying that we had used 80% of our monthly broadband limit of 40GB (in one week) and needed to click on the notification - but we survived. My solitary photo during the week was of two rain-spangled webs between the patio railings. The tits usually check the railings for spiders but they must have missed a couple.
Now I have no excuses left and have to get stuck into the garden work. The garden is in desperate need of some radical tidying after being neglected during the preparation for the visitors. The ditch also needs to be cleared of ferns and the hedges need attention too. My first task was to mow the grass which has been enjoying all the rain and then I started cutting back some of the Welsh poppies, oxeye daisies and foxgloves which were setting seed. I don't attempt to stop them self-seeding but do try to cut down a bit on the amount of seed.
The end of summer is approaching now the visitors have departed . . . and the birds are gradually deserting us too. Some of the finches, which nested nearby and visited the feeder every day during the breeding season, are leaving to join flocks feasting on the thistle seeds in the countryside. The green finches and lesser redpolls left first and I haven't seen a goldfinch for almost a week now. The siskins are still coming to the feeder and the chaffinches, like the poor, are always with us.
Today (Monday) I am starting to record the number of birds for the Garden Birdwatch scheme. So far this morning I have noted:
1 wren, 3 robins, 4 coal tits, 3 blue tits, 2 great tits, at least 8 siskins, more than 14 chaffinches, 1 blackbird and and 2 blackcaps.
The blackcaps are very camera-shy. I wonder whether this is due to the fact that most of these little birds migrate from the Mediterranean area and North Africa to breed in Britain. They may be more accustomed to having guns pointed at them rather than cameras. Usually they duck down into the vegetation in the raspberry patch or fly off to a nearby tree when they spot me looking through the window with a camera. But this little female was too busy eating to notice me.
I have only seen female and juvenile blackcaps on the raspberries but I did spot a male near some unidentified berries outside the conservatory. I grew the bramble-like plants from bud cuttings given to me by a friend. They were already growing in the garden when she moved to a new house in Ballaugh and the estate agent told her that they were a type of hybrid berry. It seems most likely that they are a variety of tayberry which is a raspberry/blackberry hybrid developed in Scotland. The other possibility is a boysenberry but it think that has finer thorns. They don't fruit very well but that may be because they are growing in a rather shady place.
This is the fruit.
The leaves are similar to a bramble but larger.
I am in a quandary about the bird feeding. During the past two weeks I have discovered two sad little fatalities in the garden - one siskin and one coal tit - obviously the victims of marauding moggies from nearby gardens. I thought we were doing the birds a favour by providing peanuts, sunflower seeds and niger seed to supplement their natural diets. But the good might be outweighed by putting them at risk by attracting them to a garden where they could be targeted by cats.
We haven't had a problem before but there are more cats living in the neighbourhood this summer. Also it is possible that the birds are more at risk now that we are providing sunflower seeds and niger seed. Both these foods tend to spill onto the ground under the feeder and this makes the birds more vulnerable when they are scavenging for scattered seed on the ground. I think I will try to construct a fence around the feeder to stop the cats from lurking under the raspberries and pouncing on their victims. But if there are more fatalities we may have to consider restricting feeding - and only put out food in severe weather in winter when the cats are less likely to be outdoors.
It continues to be a disappointing summer for butterflies in our garden. Apart from a few meadow browns visiting the oregano in the back garden, I haven't seen any for the past couple of weeks. The buddleia shrubs which are commonly called "butterfly bushes" are devoid of butterflies and the first flowers are already fading. We had one rather insipid pale mauve buddleia when we first moved here but there must have been cross-pollination with other colours in neighbouring gardens because now we have a variety of colours from white to almost purple.
PS (Monday afternoon) I thought of making an collage of the different colours of buddleia flowers but found it was impossible to capture their true colour in the sunny conditions this morning. When I went out again this afternoon to make another futile attempt, I discovered that I had spoken (or rather written) too soon about the lack of butterflies. It was a bit windy but on the big buddleia on the sheltered side of the garage I saw one red admiral . . .
. . . and then one small tortoiseshell . . .
. . . and then not one but two peacocks!
There is definitely no shortage of common red soldier beetles - Rhagonycha fulva. They are the most common soldier beetle in Britain and there are plenty in our garden. When I checked their name on the internet I found out some amusing trivia. Apparently they have been described as "hogweed bonking beetles". According to Matthew Oates, Invertebrate Ecologist for the National Trust, "Its name was first entered into the Invertebrate Site Register as a joke, but despite a complaint from a Yorkshire vicar, it stuck. The name was eventually edited out from the register but not before it had passed into entomological legend. It also has a polite name: the Common Red Soldier beetle."
Soldier beetles are named after the red uniforms of British soldiers in the past. Some of the bluish-coloured species have been called Sailor Beetles.
The little beetles may be particularly fond of bonking on the hogweed but they enjoy the pollen of the wild angelica in our garden - and I have also seen them on the echinops.
Magnified image.
Sharing the wild angelica with some hoverflies.
On the echinops.
The hoverflies were also visiting the Japanese anemones.
As well as the beetles and hoverflies there are still plenty of bumblebees around so there is no shortage of pollinators in the garden during these last weeks of summer. And thinking about bumblebees reminds me of an impulse item that I was tempted to buy at the supermarket.
There were some Lamium silver plants on display and they had been reduced to 99p. But the bumblebees visiting the flowers outside the shop really sold this attractive groundcover plant to me.
When I went out to take that photo I was slightly disappointed to see that my bumblebees where not showing any interest in their new present. There were plenty around but they were all on the oregano flowers!
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