Wildlife Garden

Trying to make the most of the good weather. Some photo's from our Wildlife Garden. ( a small area at the bottom of our garden, recognised by the Somerset Wildlife Trust .)

This first picture is not as good as I hoped for but just shows some type of bee or fly feeding on the head of a Thistle. It had a large proboscis

Since I added the description below I now thnk that the photo simply shows the Flower head beginning to open. I'll check again today and it should be much clearer now!!

On the same thistle I noticed this unusual collection of eggs? They were sitting in the crown of an unopened thistle flower head . They look like eggs to me, but what insect chooses a thistle flower head before it has opened?

Also just starting to flower is this Ragwort, probably Common Ragwort. I have been trying hard to use a key to pin down as to whether it is Common,Oxford, Hoary or something else. Its certainly not Silver as I saw that last year on the Cornish coast and it is quite different.

My favourite umbellifer, Wild Carrot.  Clearly showing the small red flower in the centre and the prominent bracts. Very distinctive.

Wildflowers at the Olympic Park. Should our traditional nature reserves add non native flowers?

Extract from an  article in the Gurdian Newspaper.

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Click here to see the article  Guardian.co.uk

Matthew Appleby.

If you want to see the big ideas coming out of British horticulture, there's no better – or bigger – showcase than the gardens and meadows of the Olympic Park in Stratford.

The 250-hectare site in east London has been filled with 4,000 trees, 300,000 wetland plants, 15,000 square metres of lawns and more than 150,000 perennial plants, in an ambitious scheme designed to delight visitors to the Games and leave a legacy of a permanent park once the Olympics are over.

First, there are the wildflower meadows, 10 football fields-worth of them, carefully planned and sown to reach their peak just in time for the torch's arrival in east London next Friday, and sporting a suitably Olympic gold colour scheme. Wildflowers are having a moment: sales of cornflowers, field poppies and other pollinator-friendly blooms have tripled this year, influenced by Sarah Raven's TV programme Bees, Butterflies And Blooms, and Chelsea show gardens packed with wispy natives.

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Please read the full article.

Interesting comments about the use of non native species which is not a new feature of the English countryside. Many plants seem to have been introduced many years ago.

This links well with the differing points of view generated by the "Fields of Dreams" in South Petherton which are currently benefiting no doubt from the sunshine. By comparison our 4 acre meadow in Curry Rivel is managed to show off plants and flowers which are native to this part of Somerset. Its a challenging thought to consider changing our policy to deliberately  bring in , say , flowers from South Africa or elsewhere. We have a meeting of our management group and I might ask for opinions on the subject. 

Gardens:wildflowers at the Olympic Park

Fantastic summer weather!!

The sun works wonders for wildlife in our meadow.  Photos taken last Saturday whilst showing  some friends around the field.  These photos are not the sharpest in the world but they just show yet again the variety of wildlife activity that is just waiting for some one to slowly walk around and look carefully at the hedges, grasses and wild flowers and insects that live there.

This first picture tries to show the Grass Vetchling , still flowering but at the same time, on the same grass like plant, a seed pod has developed. You can see it towards the top right hand corner. I must find out how to put a marker on a photo!

This yellow flower is,  I hope, a Greater Birds-foot-trefoil, looking resplendent in the bright sunshine. It grows in patches and looks very attractive against the grasses.

Whilst looking at plants which my friends were mostly interested in we found the ants nest, which are pretty numerous in the field , had come alive as ants came out and climbed up the grass stems and eventually flew off. Hundreds and probably thousands from the several nests we were close to. I know very little about this phase of an ants life cycle and I assume we were seeing male and female ants here.
A quick look at Wiki here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_ant ,   gives an idea of the complex world of ants

I feel confident that this flower is Wild Basil. Growing at one end of the field in a patch in front of a hedge over about 30 metres or so. very attractive. Mild herby smell from the leaves.

Just as we were leaving the field we noticed this Gatekeeper butterfly , quite close to the gate as it happens! We had already seen large numbers of Meadow Browns, Ringlet, Large Skipper, Marbled White's , Large White, and numerous Burnet moths

Wildlife in Somerset meadows

We had a bit of drama in our meadow on Sunday. I had just spent a hour or so taking some record photos to show what was surviving the wet and unpleasant weather when a young man came into our field. To cut a long story short he was from Western Power and investigating a loss of electricity in our village. It became necessary to get access to a pole on the edge of our field which meant bringing in three large vans with all their gear to carry out repairs. Having pointed out that the field was a nature reserve they were careful to keep to the edge of the field to minimise trampling the grasses and orchids!

It took an hour or so to complete the work and peace and quiet was restored as was the electricity supply.

Here are a few of the wildlife photos I had just taken:

Soldier Beetles having a party!

 Marbled White on Knapweed  ( Centaurea scabiosa)

Burnet Moth enjoying the Knapweed.  ( Centaurea scabiosa)

Is this the Thickleg Beetle, Oedemera nobilis ? ( with rather thin legs!!)

on Field Scabious  ( Knautia arvensis)

To see a better photograph try this link:

http://iloveflowerbeetles.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/ukflowerbeetle_by_mountainashe.jpg

This is just one of hundreds if not a thousand or more in our 4 acres.  Pyramidal Orchid. (Anacamptis pyramidalis) I even found a pure white specimen a week or so ago.

Reflections of a Curlew: Welcome to the Anthropocene

Here is a link to a very interesting Blog. I would be pleased to read  any comments you may feel able to share with me.


Reflections of a Curlew: Welcome to the Anthropocene

This is serious!

I have recently been re reading "Only One Earth", which was written as a "guide " to the 1972 UN conference on the Global Environment.
All the issues now being reported on by George and others were well known and debated 40 years ago.
Such was the apparent concern that world leaders and Governments prepared and duly signed in 1992 various documents to address the ever growing seriousness of the problems  facing us all. All the reports from Rio +20 are worrying. Below is part of one of those reports.


Just to try and cheer myself up I've added at the end a few photos taken in our local meadow this last week!

Please read on:

How “Sustainability” Became “Sustained Growth” Posted: 22 Jun 2012 06:06 AM PDT The Rio Declaration rips up the basic principles of environmental action. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 22nd June 2012

In 1992 world leaders signed up to something called “sustainability”. Few of them were clear about what it meant; I suspect that many of them had no idea. Perhaps as a result, it did not take long for this concept to mutate into something subtly different: “sustainable development”. Then it made a short jump to another term: “sustainable growth”. And now, in the 2012 Earth Summit text that world leaders are about to adopt, it has subtly mutated once more: into “sustained growth”. This term crops up 16 times in the document, where it is used interchangeably with sustainability and sustainable development. But if sustainability means anything, it is surely the opposite of sustained growth. Sustained growth on a finite planet is the essence of unsustainability. As Robert Skidelsky, who comes at this issue from a different angle, observes in the Guardian today: “Aristotle knew of insatiability only as a personal vice; he had no inkling of the collective, politically orchestrated insatiability that we call economic growth. The civilization of “always more” would have struck him as moral and political madness. And, beyond a certain point, it is also economic madness. This is not just or mainly because we will soon enough run up against the natural limits to growth. It is because we cannot go on for much longer economising on labour faster than we can find new uses for it.” Several of the more outrageous deletions proposed by the United States – such as any mention of rights or equity or of common but differentiated responsibilities – have been rebuffed. In other respects the Obama government’s purge has succeeded, striking out such concepts as “unsustainable consumption and production patterns” and the proposed decoupling of economic growth from the use of natural resources.

Bee Orchid

 Goats Beard in seed with a Grass Vetchling which happened to be nicely placed in front.

 And  grasses which are flowering well right now. This is Quaking Grass

Meadow photographs

Here are some of my photos taken this afternoon in a break in the showers.

All seen in our meadow or in the adjacent hedge.

Burnet Moth (possibly Five-spot)

Broomerape

Bee Orchid

Very fresh Pyramidal Orchids

Goats Beard with a Grass Vetchling

Quaking Grass

A caterpillar!?

Wildlife Photography of Insects.Osmia bicolor.

The Mason Bee Story


Dear readers,
Its an exciting privilege for me to be able to use my Blog to help you to be amongst the first people to  hear about a new book on the subject of insect photography. Even better than a poster to publicise it I am showing photographs taken by John Bebbington, the Author. I asked John to provide some words to go with the photographs and I am sure you will appreciate how this story demonstrates the wonder of the natural world which is all around us. Below is Johns commentary, details of the book and some of his photographs taken very recently and not included in the book as far as I know.
We have here a combination of photographic skill, keen observation of wildlife in our own back gardens and dedication to the study of the natural world. I have collected quite a few books on wildlife in recent years and I will be ordering this one as soon as its available. As you will know I have avoided advertising on this Blog and this is a one off exception.


Please note that the link shown below takes you to the publisher but you may prefer to  contact the author direct: 


Signed copies can be obtained fro £16.99 including p&p from the author at Quantock View, Newtown, Langport TA10 9SE. Cheques payable to John Bebbington please.

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Mason Bee story.  


"Here are the images of the Mason Bee and its larva. It is the Two-coloured Mason Bee Osmia bicolor.

The bee had built cells between the two doors of our garden shed so that when we opened the shed the cells were exposed and one fell off. Even with the door open she returned and started to repair the cells. We wondered if the pollen was that of Welsh Poppy, which is abundant in our garden, so we looked at pollen from the larval cell which had fallen off the door and at pollen from a Welsh Poppy – they were the same.   The next morning we watched the bee gathering Welsh Poppy pollen.

I repaired the damaged cells with clingfilm and scotch tape and they seem to be OK."

"Photography book My book ‘Insect Photography – Art and techniques’ is due to be published by Crowood Press on 15th June. Details are on the Crowood Press website at

http://www.crowood.com/details.asp?isbn=9781847973788&t=Insect-Photography---Art-and-Techniques"

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 Two-coloured Mason Bee Osmia bicolor.  Photo by John Bebbington

the Mason Bee repairing the cells.   Photo  John Bebbington

The Mason Bee larva in its laval cell. Photo  John Bebbington

Do Bats fly in the day time?

Did you see the BBC Spring Watch programme last night. They talked about comments from a viewer who had filmed a bat flying in daylight. You should be able to see the programme again on iPlayer.
Suggested explanations were given including bad weather and a cold previous night, lack of insects flying at night and a hungry bat.  It was not thought to be a good plan for a bat as they become an easy target for predatory birds.
I'll look at the web site for the programme which can be found at this link.   click here:
or use this web address   http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01js14q/Springwatch_2012_Episode_8/

On the recorded programme you need to move the time marker along to 13. 40 min and the item runs until 15.40 min

You can also go to my earlier post on 12th September  2006.  The label link should work to take you to it.
I've just checked the bat lable and was surprised how many posts I've made on the subject!

Changes to my Blog

Hi,
I've decided to have a fresh look at how I present my Blog. I've started by stripping out one or two features like the list of labels which filled up a lot of space. Each post will still have labels and you can still click on any shown on a post to see other posts on the same subject. I've taken off the heading and photo which was a bit old news! Ironically as the orchid and Ladies Bedstraw shown are just about to come into flower again!!
It will be interesting to see if I get any comments or if the viewings change. Its all a big experiment really.
I must also find the time to update my 365 photo coverage of the year but maybe there is a better way of showing you an album on Picasa or similar.
Any advice you can offer is welcome.
Best wishes to all,
David

Pictures below from my visit to a nature reserve on the south coast. There are three Turns here all squabbling about nesting space. The aerial acrobatics display was very impressive!