We regularly record five different species of tits including this Marsh tit (below), five different finches including this male Bullfinch (right) as well as other common species, many of which peck around on the ground for any spoils.

Woodpeckers, Greater-spotted and this young Green one which is looking mostly for ants (left) and nuthatches (below left) are also regular visitors though less welcome is a Sparrowhawk which often picks off a bird as it flashes by. (below right.)

Rosehips and Holly don’t last long either, certainly not reaching Christmas. There are plenty of garden shrubs still offering edible berries along with the bright pink fruits of the Spindleberry almost clashing with their orange seeds (below) and the sourer sloes (fruits of the Blackthorn) which stay on the trees a bit longer. (lift)

(SLOE GIN - pick 500g of sloes, prick them with a needle and add to 1L gin with 250g sugar. Seal the bottle and shake regularly. Leave for 3months or more and you have a delicious liqueur or an addition to cooked plums, apricots etc)

I had always wanted a wildflower meadow and having now achieved that along with enhancing our hedges with more native species, building a pond and generally gardening for wildlife, we have seen a real increase of species across the board so we feel that we are doing our little bit towards enriching the countryside again. I can also agree that immersing ourselves in nature and the outdoors has really helped our well-being in this awful time of Covid.

The black berries of the ivy tend to be available when the fruit of most other species has been eaten and thrushes, pigeons and blackbirds are some of the birds we see taking advantage of them in the winter months.

We have put a hedgehog box under some trees in the hope it might become a safe winter nesting place for one of our resident hedgehogs. So far only mice and slugs have eaten the food pellets we’ve put inside. However I have also been scattering them nearby and then monitoring any night time visitors on our wildlife camera. We’ve seen an owl, occasional hedgehogs but mostly a fox which is rather efficient at hoovering up the food.

This wasp nest is hanging under the eaves of our summerhouse. It is only about 10cm in diameter and as we haven’t noticed wasps going in and out is probably abandoned. The papery outer layers are constructed from chewed wood and would normally enclose cells containing eggs which hatch into larvae then turn into pupae before the adult wasps emerge.

Robin’s Pincushions (robins pincushion) are quite prevalent on wild Dog Roses and are caused by a small gall wasp.

The fibrous tissue turns red in Autumn to give it its name and contains many larvae (inside the gall) which feed on the tissue throughout the winter.

Some bumble bees are still flying around and feeding on the late flowers. Single dahlia flowers are a really important source of easily accessible nectar at this time, unlike the doubles which are showy but have no available nectaries.

Butterflies like this Tortoiseshell are able to use their long tongues to drink nectar from the Verbena bonariensis.

Most bumblebee species like the Carder are also long-tongued and so can take advantage of the nectar at the bottom of any tubular-shaped petals.

However the buff-tailed and white-tailed species (buff tailed feeding at base of flower tube) have short tongues so instead bite a hole at the base of the tube to “rob” the nectar

(You can see a bite hole in the flower the Carder bee is feeding on). This doesn’t help pollination, though of course it’s not a problem with more open flowers.

We have seen the grass snake several times but it disappears so fast I cannot photograph it. However I found its skin sloughed off in the compost heap. Snakes do this in order to grow but also to rid themselves of parasites. They start at the head end and push themselves forwards so it turns the old skin inside out like a sock.

Beautiful Demoiselles prefer running water and so we presume this rather late one has flown up from the river.

On a misty morning last week all the cobwebs that normally aren’t very noticeable showed up everywhere in their hundreds covered in dew. The common garden spider was sitting in the middle of its vertical orb web waiting for prey. The cross on its body in the past was thought to be a holy talisman and a good luck charm so sometimes a gold one was substituted for a cross on a chain.

The hedges were full of densely woven sheets attached to a tangle of threads above. Prey gets caught in these and falls down into the “hammock”.

Inevitably voles, frogs and toads get disturbed and the buzzards appear from nowhere to take advantage of an easy meal.

It was a young one this year with its paler underside.

He perched variously on a telegraph pole,

electricity wire

and a rather thin Hawthorn branch

before occasionally diving down for its catch

Despite setting my camera on high shutter speed and continuous frames, a combination of the bird’s speed and very strong winds made it particularly difficult to get sharp photos in flight.

A small mention of my “weed” patch. Thistles, dock, nettles, brambles plus others kept out of the main area are now seeding and fruiting thus giving further food for the finches etc. to feast on. (below left) You can see the “C” on the underwing of the Comma butterfly (right) perched on the blackberry, helping its identification

The Hedge Bindweed (below right) is still flowering, twisting round fences and other plants, in this case up a Dock seed head. Although it is a useful pollen source for late bees and the leaves are food for the Convolvulus Hawkmoth it is thought of as a nuisance by most gardeners. .

I can’t believe that I have followed the full life cycle of the meadow, starting at the beginning of lockdown in March. I have really enjoyed studying it in more detail with the challenge of trying to take reasonable photos as illustrations.

Already the mown area has a green tinge to it as the underlying grasses are still growing but this is an advantage to all the insects that will be overwintering in their various growth stages.

And so life continues…

The meadow is now brown with seedheads occasionally speckled with colour from a few late flowers of earlier species and green at the base from the grasses. The Perennial Rye grass (right) which is common in grazing and lawn mixtures is now flowering. Another late species is the Smooth Meadow grass (below) which forms a fluffy cloud amongst other stems.

Goldfinches are almost solely seedeaters and I see them chattering in “charms” as they balance on the dead stems eating some of the seeds. There are still butterflies and bees and numerous other insects flitting about and always some I have never seen before.

True flies only have one pair of wings with the rear pair reduced to clubs (halteres) helping with balance. They have a liquid diet, either lapping it up with spongy mouthparts or piercing and sucking. The former can be seen in the photos of a house fly (below left) and green bottle (below right)

Hover flies use a similar mechanism and are so called because of their ability to hover. There are 270 known species in this country differing in size, colour and pattern. I have illustrated four below.

Like the Painted Lady butterfly, the day-flying Silver Y moth is an immigrant from the continent laying its eggs on many different low-growing plants including clover. I often disturb them in the meadow but their wingbeat is incredibly fast and they don’t stay still for long making them difficult to photograph. They have a bright Y marking on each forewing giving them their name.

We have over 260 bees in the UK but only one is a honeybee and 25 are bumble bees. The rest are solitary bees which construct individual cells for each egg which is supplied with nectar and pollen, often sited in hollow stalks, tubular holes or underground tunnels. The leafcutter bee (right) will line the cells with cut pieces of leaf primarily from roses (below left) and seal each one with a further circle of leaf. It doesn’t collect the pollen in baskets or on its legs but amongst the yellow hairs on the underside of its abdomen. They are one of the best pollinators so making a bee hotel (below right) to help them is worthwhile. My granddaughter made this one as a school project but they can just be a tied bundle of bamboo cut into approx. 8in lengths and hung on a fence or in a tree.

The attractive Small Copper butterfly is both small and copper-coloured and fast flying. It lays its eggs singly on Sorrel leaves which is the food plant of the caterpillars. There may be 2 or 3 generations a year.

Despite having the name of Gatekeeper, this butterfly spends a lot of time flying amongst the grasses though one of its favourite nectar plants is blackberry flowers. We have a large blackberry bush in the middle of the meadow which not only provides us with lots of fruit but is an encouragement for many flying insects. At first glance the Gatekeeper can be mistaken for a Meadow Brown but it has bright orange patches with eyespots on the upperside of both wings. The male is distinguished by dark scent bands. The underside can similarly be mistaken but has the addition of small white eyespots. Eggs are laid by dropping them singly amongst the grasses where the caterpillars emerge to feed on the leaves before crawling down to the base where they hibernate over the winter.

There have been many 6-spot Burnet moths as reported earlier and this strange structure attached to a daisy stem is a cacoon that originally enclosed the chrysalis.​

Wild carrot​ is a biennial so the first year it produces a mound of feathery leaves followed the next year by branched stems of white umbels of flowers, sometimes tinged with pink. Often in the centre are a few dark red flowers, possibly an invitation to insects. This one also has a cluster of eggs probably from some sort of shield bug. The root does smell of carrot but is small, white and fibrous and not really palatable. Each year a few plants appear in the meadow though they do prefer chalky soils. They are much taller than the stouter Sea Carrot, a subspecies found regularly along our clifftops.

Meadowsweet grows in slightly damper conditions and it is now showing its lovely creamy coloured flowers.​(Meadowsweet) It has quite a heady scent and was once used as a strewing herb to help counteract unpleasant smells. It also has medicinal properties including salicylic acid (aspirin) and was used to flavour mead.

Philip from Lethytep gave me a seedhead of Yellow Bartsia a couple of years ago and a few specimens have appeared since then. Like the Hayrattle it is a hemiparasitic annual still photosynthesising with its green leaves but gaining minerals from the grasses.

Btw we saw the first Silver-washed Fritillary this week. They have become more common the last few years and some of you may remember the trip to RHS Rosemoor in 2018 with Ross where they were flying around in clouds!

Another new appearance is the Greater Burnet, a native of damp grassland. A member of the Rose family its maroon flower heads are like small lollipops on long stalks with the compound leaves growing near the base. It has been used for centuries as a medicinal plant, particularly with its astringent properties supposedly to stop bleeding.

There are literally thousands of the common field grasshoppers in the meadow leaping up to 20 times their body length as my footsteps disturb them. Back in 23rd May they were newly-hatched tiny nymphs but over the weeks they have shed their exoskeletons several times in order to become full-size adults. Their wings start as little buds and increase in length at each moult so that finally the males can rub their legs against them to make their familiar song to attract the females. There can be different colour variations to blend in with the background and the brown version with the full-length wings shows this really well. Eggs are laid into the soil at the base of grasses where they overwinter before hatching and starting the growth cycle again.

This beautiful Southern hawker dragonfly (below left) is resting between flights over the meadow where it catches a variety of other insects within the basket shape it makes with its legs, to assuage its voracious appetite. I moved on to the pond only to see another identical dragonfly just flying away. It had crawled out of the water as a large nymph and clung to a leaf before emerging from the exoskeleton as the mature adult (below right).

Three spiders have come to my attention. Firstly the Small Wolf spider that creeps low amongst the grasses jumping on its prey. The female carries the egg sac under her back end (below left) and then the spiderlings on her back(below right) for a few days after that. (both chance photos so apologise for poor quality)

The Nursery Web spider (left) is a fast and active hunter with the female this time carrying the egg sac in her fangs. She spins a silk tent for the spiderlings and the photo shows her guarding them.

The Harvestman (right) is closely related but not actually a spider, with its head fused to its body, no silk gland or fangs and catching its prey using hooks on the end of its eight very long legs. This is not to be confused with the Daddy Longlegs or Cranefly, an insect with six legs. Its larva is the leatherjacket which is a nuisance to gardeners because of it eating plant roots and stems.

One of my favourite wildflowers is the Meadow Cranesbill (left) whose brilliant blue flowers have just started blooming, despite their preference for more alkaline soils.

We have Hedge Woundwort (below left) flowering in the hedges but being a slightly damp meadow the Marsh Woundwort (below right) grows along one side as well. The latter differs with its paler flowers and narrow smoother leaves compared to the nettle-shaped ones of the former though both have an unpleasant smell. Wort means used as food or medicine so in this case they were used to treat wounds.

I have one mistake to rectify. On 24th April I named the caterpillar wrapped in a nettle leaf as that of the Snout Moth. It was in fact that of the Nettle Tap (right), not that most people would probably be concerned! I was walking past the nettle patch in the rain and there was a swarm of tiny moths, less than 1cm in length. On reading up about them, they had developed from the black-spotted, pale cream caterpillars I’d seen earlier in the year.1pic alongside

Yarrow was one of the original flowers in the meadow and despite looking like a member of the carrot family is actually a Daisy (Asteraceae). It is strong smelling with feathery leaves and each inflorescence has numerous groups of florets in the form of yellowish disc florets surrounded by white ray florets.

Self Heal is common as a spreading plant in lawns but growing more upright in a meadow environment. Deep purple flowers grow in squares in an oblong shape. As the name suggests it has been used as a herbal remedy for centuries due to its anti-inflammatory properties, healing wounds, treating heart disease etc.

Male large skipper

Female small skipper

Skipper butterflies are now about with their wings held like “Jump Jets” at rest, which seem to be for very short moments in the hot sun, preferring to fly at great speed defending their territories. The small Skipper is bright orange whereas the large skipper is darker, more veined with a fine hook at the end of its antennae. In my photograph one antenna is missing from a very tatty specimen. In both species the males have black stripes of scent scales. Eggs are laid singly under blades of grass and the caterpillars hibernate over the winter forming “nests” within tubes of grass.

The 6-spot Burnet moth is day-flying, feeding particularly on the nectar of Knapweeds and laying its eggs on Birdsfoot Trefoil which the caterpillars eat and also hibernate in over winter. Their six bright red spots on each wing act as a warning to predators as hydrogen cyanide is produced in every growth stage of the moth.

The Yellow Hayrattle is living up to its name with the seed from the earliest plants now ripe and rattling loose within the persistent cup of sepals. I usually collect some of the seeds and spread them around the meadow.

I have mentioned previously that some grasses are useful but not so many as to be detrimental to the flowers. They are flowering themselves now and have long anthers so that they can disperse their pollen in the wind. The tall False Oat Grass has grown above the daisies and almost sparkles as it sways in the breeze and sunshine. Like true oats one of the pair of bracts surrounding each floret extends into a bristle or awn.

Cocksfoot grows in tussocks and has a distinctive triangular flower head.

Crested Dogs-tail is characterised by the flower head being flattened on one side.

Yorkshire Fog or Velvet grass has a soft feel to its leaves and the flower heads are tinged with purple. The origin of the former name was that from a distance it was likened to the smoke billowing from the chimneys of Northern factories. All three mingle amongst the daisies at approximately the same height and are just examples taken from the fourteen different species we have recorded in the whole garden.

The warmth at the beginning of last week brought out lots of Meadow Brown butterflies. They are the most numerous species in the UK and have the reverse situation of most butterflies with the female being larger and more colourful than the male. The underside of the wings as shown are similar with just a few subtle differences. The eggs are laid in the summer and the caterpillars feed on several different grasses, overwintering at their base until the following Spring. They then pupate for 3 weeks before emerging as adults again, ready to feed on nectar from a variety of flowers. The front pair of their legs are vestigial but may be adapted as sensory organs and so you only see them standing on their 2 remaining pairs. This is a feature of the family Nymphalidae which also includes the Fritillaries and the large “Reds”.

The highlight for me this week was finding our first orchid, naturally appearing after 9 years. I think it is a Southern Marsh, not uncommon but still welcome. Orchid seed is like dust without an endosperm (food store) and needs help from a fungus, sometimes a specific one, to provide sugars for germination. It can then take up to 7 years before flowering.

The first of a new generation of Tortoishell butterflies was taking advantage of the open flowers and so was this newly emerged Bush Cricket. This was tiny and like grasshoppers will change its skin 5 times before reaching the adult size. It is actually omnivorous and eats tiny invertebrates as well as plant material. Its long antennae distinguish it from a grasshopper.

The Speckled Wood butterfly is seen fluttering along the adjacent hedgerow in dappled sunlight but lays its eggs on a variety of grasses.

There are many day-flying moths with tiny micro moths, often less than 1cm long, flitting amongst the grasses at vast speed making them very difficult to photograph.

In contrast the Poplar Hawkmoth has a 7-9cm wingspan and has appeared in the moth-trap due to its host plants of poplar and willow growing along the periphery of the meadow. The adult doesn’t feed and when at rest its abdomen curls upwards and the hind wings are held forward below the front ones.

Grasshoppers are increasing in numbers but on hatching are less than 1cm long with undeveloped wings. They shed their skin up to 5 times as they grow to reach maturity.

The yellow dung fly with its fluffy abdomen and long legs folded under its body, drinks nectar and catches small insects and as the name suggests lays its eggs on dung.

Plenty of cuckoo spit can be seen as a result of the Froghopper larva producing froth to protect its soft body as it feeds on young leaves and shoots. It moults several times before becoming an adult.

At last we’re beginning to see what a wildflower meadow should be looking like – initial colours of the earlier species mixed amongst those still to grow taller and open their flowers.

Yellow Hay Rattle is always recommended in wildflower mixes because it is hemi-parasitic on grasses – its green leaves still photosynthesise but water and nutrients are gained from the grass roots to which they attach, reducing the grasses’ growth abilities by up to 60%, thus providing more space for flowers. It is an annual, named because of the retained sepals enclosing the seeds which rattle inside once mature. Of course this year it is ironic that it is needed when the rabbits are doing a far better job of keeping the grasses at bay.

I have actively removed nettles, thistles and docks from the main meadow, allowing their own small patch nearby. One dock plant can produce up to 60 thousand seeds and a tap root up to 3 ft long so rightly or wrongly I spot-treated them in the early years. Sorrel however is closely related but a more delicate plant supporting spikes of pink flowers (male and female on different plants) with arrow-shaped leaves. These can be incorporated into sauces and soups giving them a sharp lemony flavour due to their oxalic acid content. Dock leaves are oval in shape and with no proven constituent to mitigate nettle stings, their efficacy is probably a placebo effect!

spear shaped sorrel leaf

The third species is the Birdsfoot trefoil. Bright yellow patches of their flowers will continue to grow through most of the summer. Their buds often have an orange tinge and their leaves are trifoliate like clovers and with no tendrils. Like all peas the flowers typically have a standard petal at the back, two wings and a fused keel enclosing the stamens and stigma so that when a bee lands looking for nectar, its weight exposes these to enable pollination.

Four Cockchafers or Maybugs appeared in the moth trap last night. They are beetles which emerge in May as suggested by their nickname and lay their eggs in fields where the larvae live and grow for three years before pupating and becoming adults. This adult is a male because it has 7 feathers on its antennae whereas females only have 6! They can be a problem for farmers as the larvae have voracious appetites for cereal, vegetable and other roots but the adults are not destructive as they tend to eat different leaves.

The rabbits do seem to be eating mostly grass (an advantage normally) but at the same time they are trampling and even sitting on the wildflowers rather too regularly. These plants are therefore very stressed, with the need to flower being a priority and consequently are doing so at 2-3inches high compared with their normal height. Some flower buds are eaten along with the grass and bare scrapes are quickly being colonised by annual “weeds” producing more a look of wasteland.

Luckily there are areas that have not been under attack and with the rain at last, plenty of plants are managing to grow normally. Not many are flowering yet so I’m posting a relatively short report this week.

Almost all the butterflies from that first flush have died and their offspring are probably now in their pupal stage. However the importance of the Lady’s Smock and other early Brassica species is shown with them still hosting the Orange Tip, Green-veined White (below left) and Small White butterflies (below right) for both feeding and egg-laying. Remember to look closely at the underwings to distinguish between the latter two because of their similar colour and upper wing patterns.

The earliest grass to flower is the short, not too invasive, Sweet Vernal Grass, so called because of the sweet smell when dry. It has particularly long anthers which shed their pollen in the wind before the stigmas appear, to ensure cross pollination.

Nettles are an important food source for the larvae of the bigger “red” butterflies and indeed are known to support up to 40 insects in different ways. We keep a large patch along the edge of the meadow but currently I have only seen this snout moth caterpillar wrapped singly in a web on the leaf tips.

Finally, I put my moth trap out last night in the middle of the meadow just to see if any moths were flying this early in the year. Most of them feed on the surrounding trees and bushes so I am departing from my blog subject but I just wanted to include photos of a few of the species collected. I haven’t identified them yet but they are all wonderful mimics and I hope you find them as fascinating as I do!

A few small flowers are growing in patches whilst the vegetation is low, for example two more different Speedwell species, the Thyme-Leaved (left) and Germander as well as the common Mouse-ear (above), so named because of its soft ear-shaped leaves.

The dandelions are beginning to set seed in their familiar clock shapes and apparently may be eaten by Goldfinches, Siskins and Sparrows.

The meadow is slightly damp and the Ladies Smock/Cuckoo Flower, which likes these conditions is appearing all over. This is one of the major feeding plants of the Orange Tip butterfly. The female has grey wing-tips (above left) unlike the orange of the male and not only drinks the nectar but lays its eggs singly just below the flower bud (left). Once hatched, the caterpillar feeds on the flowers and seed pods. The Green-veined White butterfly (above right) follows a similar practice but is not in competition because its caterpillars tend to eat the leaves. Although we’ve seen the latter flying about I haven’t managed to photograph one on the Lady’s Smock. Speckled Wood butterflies have also appeared , flitting along the hedgerows.

Bumblebee queens emerge after winter hibernation with the intention of making a nest. This Red-Tailed bumblebee for instance was bumbling in all directions over the meadow looking for somewhere underground, like an old mouse hole, to lay her eggs.

Sadly almost all the cowslip flowers have been nibbled by the rabbits so I have included a photo from last year to show you what a sight they normally are.

The blue flowers of Field Speedwell, thought of as a weed by most gardeners, do make lovely splashes of colour mixed in with the Celandines.

A few white Fritillaries have appeared amongst the purple ones. In the wild they tend to be natural like the occasional white bluebell but horticulturally they are often named as a subvariety alba.

This oil beetle has a fascinating life cycle (https://www.buglife.org.uk/projects/oil-beetles/) and I'm pleased to say we might be helping its existence.

Most of my bird and animal photos are taken through the kitchen window, hand-held with my 18-300 telephoto lens, looking up the meadow, some times at great distance, so the quality isn't brilliant. Apart from the rabbits we have squirrels looking for their stored nuts, jays and other crows pecking for leatherjackets and the blackbirds digging for worms to feed their already hatched young. All this is overseen by the local buzzard sitting in an ash tree (50M away), sitting being the operative word as it has no interest in reducing the rabbit population for us!