Hiding in the leaf-litter

The recent stormy weather meant plenty of leaves to rake up, and with them a profusion of small creatures that fell with the leaves. Here are some that were new to me:




Meawhile, someone took a look to see if there was anything edible among the leaves

Mushrooms and midges

A warm damp autumn has extended the bug season and produced interesting crops of fungi:

Hedgehopping kite

Red kites can be quite alarming when they hop over the hedge and look at you.

More “finds”

Here are a few things I’ve encountered for the first time in the last few days:
The caterpillar of the Grey Dagger Moth – along with a photo from last year of the moth itself. The moth could be a Grey Dagger or Dark Dagger – they are almost indistinguishable, but the caterpillars are very different.

A caterpillar of the Bright-line brown-eye moth (and a photo of the moth from earlier in the year)

A Hazel leaf-roller weevil – if you like numbers, after “09/09/09″, this is the 333rd species I’ve identified. It doesn’t seem to have done any harm, as the hedge is full of ripe hazel nuts: I’m just expecting a plague of grey squirrels soon!

09/09/09

Not a lot in the garden last night (except the usual spiders, slugs, snails…) – but I couldn’t miss such a supposedly-auspicious date, so here’s what I found in the moonlight:

Shield bugs

I like shield bugs, and I’m pretty sure most of them are harmless (though I haven’t tried picking any of them up, just in case!). Recently there seem to be lots of Forest Bugs around, but over the last few weeks the local patch has produced several others:

Forest Bug

Some more Forest Bugs (lots more, soon)

A Parent Bug – which apparently gets its name from the fact that the nymphs stay with the adult for a few weeks after hatching

A nymph of the common Green Shield Bug

and a procession of what I think are Hawthorn Shield Bug nymphs

The Moth Collection

According to UK Moths, there are at least 2400 moth species in the UK; I guess I’ve only scratched the surface, but with a lot of help from friends on Flickr I’ve found and identified 80 of them around here – all “wild”, without using moth traps etc. Click the thumbnails for a bigger picture and more info:

More butterflies

A few weeks ago I commented that we didn’t seem to have as many butterflies as usual. Perhaps I was unduly pessimistic – things seem to have picked up, with large numbers of Peacocks, a few Red Admirals, the odd Comma (but never when I’ve got the camera!) and – a special delight as I haven’t seen them here for several years – quite a few Small Tortoiseshells:

The Wildflower Meadow

What could be better than not mowing the lawn? The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust have some advice on turning a grassy area into a wildflower meadow, starting with “Let it grow during the summer to see what turns up”, so I stopped mowing at the end of May and waited to see what happened. The results were not too encouraging: several ant-hills, a lot of white clover (great for bumble-bees), daisies, buttercups, numerous tall yellow-flowered weeds (with hundreds of hover-flies), quite a lot of Self-heal. There were a couple of surprises – Ragwort (I hoped that this would bring Cinnabar moths, but so far it’s only produced tiny Ragwort flea beetles), and Sea Holly (full of pollen beetles) – presumably a garden escape. Still, at least I don’t have to mow it again until September.

The hedges are doing better, with White Bryony and Woody Nightshade making an appearance,


along with Dwarf Mallow on the path

Butterflies…

…don’t like rain, so I haven’t seen many – but the sun shone for a while today, and here’s what I found:

Painted Lady. A migratory species I’ve never seen before, but here in large numbers this year:

Gatekeeper

Speckled Wood. Loads of these around earlier in the year – I guess this is a second brood:

Peacock. There are usually dozens now the Buddleia is in flower; today I saw 2:

Cabbage White, laying eggs on “wild” oilseed rape. Hard to tell whether it’s a small or large white, but I’ll see what the eggs hatch into:

No sign of the usual Commas or Red Admirals, but here’s a Holly Blue I spotted earlier in the week (frustratingly they always seem to settle with their wings closed, so no chance of a photo of the bright blue seen in flight):

And, just for completeness, a Ringlet that I saw a couple of weeks ago: