July's garden wildlife - this month's assorted squigglers & wigglers.

Hello Friends,
As you know, I've been keeping a log of all the wildlife I've spotted in our garden this month. July hasn't overwhelmed us with different species, but of course, there are bound to be all sorts of wildlife shennaigans going on as soon as I put my list away & come indoors. I've not forgotten one of the Big Annual Bird Counts we did. The only feathered visitors to our garden during our selected hour were the usual suspects (though very welcome, of course!) then within 10 minutes of finishing it, a goldcrest alighted on a climber right outside the conservatory window & sat there for ages.....laughing at us, I'm sure! We are very much aware that different species visit us at different times of year. We see the most varied bird life during the winter months, whereas pond life seems most active in spring. I intend to keep putting additional species seen onto our list so that by the end of June 2015, we will have a complete record for a whole year.

Our garden wildlife at 'Hagstones' - July 2014
Butterflies: Small white, Large white, Small tortoiseshell, Meadow brown, Gatekeeper, Brimstone, Peacock, Comma, Ringlet.

This month, gatekeepers & peacocks (pictured) have been the most prolific butterflies in our garden. We haven't spotted any red admirals in our garden at all this year, which is very unusual.

Moths: Elephant hawk moth, Angle-shades moth & several tiny micro-moths which I'm unable to identify. This little orange & black stripy chap is a cinnabar moth caterpillar.

The caterpillar plant food is apparently the ragwort group, but he was tucking into our ligularia.

Birds: Swifts (nesting in our eaves again this year, hurray!!), Sparrows (ditto), Starlings, Blackbirds, Thrushes, Wood pigeons, Collared doves, Coal tit.

This is quite a low species count for us, but I think there is probably a decent amount of food around & the birds which visit our garden during winter aren't needing to put in an appearance. We've seen juvenile thrushes, starlings, sparrows & wood pigeons too, so good to know they have bred successfully. Usually, thrushes only visit in an icy winter or drought, so it was such a nice surprise to see that we now not only see them regularly, but that they have clearly nested nearby.

Other insects & assorted squigglers: Greenbottle, bluebottle (both of which are quite attractive when outside on plants & not indoors making a nuisance of themselves), 2 types of hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus & Scaeva pyrastri, I think), common wasp, cranefly, dragonfly (medium sized reddish brown) 7-spot ladybird, 22-spot ladybird (beige with black spots), ladybird larvae (hoovering aphids, yay!), green shield bug, green aphids, black aphids, earwigs, woodlice, centipedes, earthworms & red composting worms, common garden snail, snail (Cepea nemoralis? Hundreds of the things, anyway, but doing sterling work feeding the aforementioned thrush family), keel slugs, bloody massive brown & orange frilly slugs (probably not their correct zoological name!)

Bees: (I like bees too much to list them under 'Assorted squigglers') Garden bumble bee, bufftail bumble bee, honeybee. Surprisingly, we haven't seen our usual summer leaf-cutting bees yet, & as the leaves on the witch hazel are intact, they either didn't visit us during July or have decided to pick on a new plant!

Pond: Frogs, froglets, tadpoles, pond skaters, lesser water boatman, whirligig beetle, titchy leeches, pond snails. 

Mammals: Hedgehog. No sign of our bats yet, this year. 

I'm sure there are hundreds more little wiggly chaps out there just dying for a place on my list, but these are the species we've seen in July & I've really enjoyed doing a bit of pond dipping & just taking the time to walk around looking for signs of life. Must remember to check the buddlejas at night during August, as I know we have a great variety of moths out there.

And while I've been enjoying life in the garden hunting for critters, our own big furred critter has continued to count the hours until Going Outside Day. He wasn't able to have his booster jabs yesterday (bit of a saga) but should get them tomorrow, so we're hoping he will still be able to go out this weekend. In the meantime, he's been spending his time like this:

And this:

And with quite a lot of this:

Until next time,

C x

P.S. I mustn't forget to credit the Big Hairy One with the beautiful peacock butterfly photo, plus the bumble bee & frog.