Sunday 19th April 2009

A hot and sunny day in the garden brought a wide variety of insects including dancing Speckled Wood butterflies and Large and Green-veined Whites. This 14 spot Ladybird (Propylea 14-punctata) was on the native species hedge.


A Smooth Newt was fishing for tadpoles in the water feature.

An Ichneumon Fly

There doesn’t seem to be a layman’s guide to the Ichneumon Flies of the British Isles, of which there are over 2,000 species, but this may well be Ichneumon suspiciosus. This group of parasitic insects is abundant on hedgerows and other dense vegetation where they hunt about for the eggs of other invertebrates to parasitise. Adult ichneumons are long and slender with very long antennae of sixteen segments.



I chased it around the garden for a while only to find it (or another of the same species) come into the conservatory a few hours later.


The Tulips are at their peak. They're nearly as red as Jo's socks!

Sparrowhawk

On Thursday morning I was having a quiet look out of the front landing window when a Sparrowhawk landed right in front of me on the top of the hedge. Much squeaking and chirping from the Sparrows suggested he had lived up to his name and targeted one of them. I dived into the bedroom and told Jo but when I came out and grabbed my camera it seemed to have gone. Nevertheless the sparrows were all circling overhead and making a terrible row. In the end we concluded it had left and I went down to the front door to check. As I opened the door it burst from the side hedge and went off down the road.


A great experience and yet a really frustrating one. Of all the birds I have seen there are few of which I have no photo – the Sparrowhawk remains one of them!

The Easter weekend

On Easter Saturday we had our first butterfly of the year in the garden – a comma. On Sunday we had a Speckled Wood and a White.

On Saturday – as previously mentioned, we had out first Siskin and on Sunday we had quite a few of them – all female this time. The niger seed also attracted the pair of Goldfinches and some House Sparrows.

Usually all our frogs go into hiding when Helen visits but this week-end one was kind enough to say hello on Sunday.


There are now quite a few flowers out but the Daffodils and Tulips still provide the high-spots of colour.