Tuesday 25 June 2013

Summer's here and so is a bee!

After a long winter, a slow spring and very little happening, we have passed the longest day and things seem to be picking up.  I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but anyway things are flowering and today has been particularly sunny and pleasant.

So to my first bee.. . .  As I was pulling out weeds that have shot up due to the rain and warm weather, I saw this small bee hovering around on an armeria plant. These seem to be one of the most successful flowering plants I have and they consistently seem to attract bees, if the bees are out there.  This was a particularly small bee but nevertheless one of the first adventurers into this part of Scarborough.




Then, as if to prove that there is hope of further insect life, I was about to pull up a weed and saw this hoverfly settled on it.  I watched it for a few minutes and it obviously liked this type of weed.  But, when it had gone I am afraid to say I pulled it out.  There are plenty of other plants to attract the hoverly back and I am sure as weeds are strong they will grown back occasionally.



Other things are starting to happen and I finally nearly have some cornflowers.  They are tall and starting to develop a flower head.  So hopefully in not too long there will be some lovely blue flowers to keep the insects happy.







Also, last year's very successful sea thistle (eryngium gigantium) is starting to shoot up.  This was so popular with bees last year, the sooner it can develop the thistle the better.  I also have one in a pot, but this isn't growning quite as well so I might have to think about moving it.

All in all, quite a positive afternoon spent doing some weeding and seeing the progress.  Hopefully just a beginning.


Friday 7 June 2013

Garden Bioblitz 2013

Well on the weekend of 1st and 2nd June, the 2013 Garden Bioblitz happened.  It was a good fun event, with lots of input from Bioblitzers on Twitter.  Last year, the event happened in July and so, being earlier this year and also in a very late Spring, at Phoenix Court, wildlife was quite hard to find.  However, we did get a few wonderful bug sightings.

It was quite a cloudy day to start and so I did a lot of hunting under tubs and pots.  The first things I saw were several generations of pill woodlice under a paint pot, being stored outside.  This isn't a good picture, as they were moving very fast, but there were all sizes and ages.  This is the
Pill Woodlice
only type of woodlice I have seen before and I didn't quite know that there were many and varied varieties.

My knowledge of woodlice was therefore increased 100% when I found what I learned to be a common shiny woodlouse.  The latin name is Oniscus Asellus.  The link here shows pictures taken by a much better photographer than me!  These are larger than the Pill Woodlice shown here and move much more slowly. But still too fast for a decent photo!




Having searched fairly unsuccesfully for wildlife I was even quite pleased to find these snails on my Sea Holly Plant.  I wouldn't normally be happy about them being there at all, but at least they showed that something was living in my garden.




Egg of Common Gull
Obviously one common wildlife element is the seagulls that are nesting on the roof.  Seagulls are well known to anyone staying in Scarborough and these ones sometimes make people jump by standing on the flat roof outside one of our top floor rooms, or also standing on the domed glass at the top of one of our staircases.  This gives a very odd picture of two webbed feet and the underside of a seagull.  This egg was found at the back of Phoenix Court earlier this week.



A bit more searching and a little bit of gentle digging produced some
Garden Centipede
earth worms and also this rather wonderful garden centipede.  Bright orange, it curled itself onto the pen I was prodding gently into the soil and this enabled me to lift it onto a wall.  At which point it spread to its full length and eventually disappeared under the stone it is heading towards.

The next day I had another search as the sun was shining a bit more and it looked generally a bit more promising.  Well, luck prevailed and I actually saw my first few ladybirds of 2013.  Last year there were loads of them around but they have been extremely elusive so far.

With a final bit of prodding in a wall I found this house spider.  It appeared out of a crack in the wall but disappeared into another one just as quickly.

The only flying insect I saw was a hoverfly and there was no way I could get a picture of this.


Ribwort Plantain



Plant life wise, the things that are going strong but that have found their way accidentally into our garden are clover, and Ribwort Plantain, which shows up on the car park lawn regularly.

Since the Bioblitz things have started flowering in my wildlife planting area and I have also started to see the occasional cabbage white butterfly around, but nothing made a show last weekend.

All in all, the Garden Bioblitz is great fun.  It's good to go searching round your garden to see what is living there - however small and insignificant or grand and wonderful this might be.  The help provided via twitter in identifying bugs and plants was great.

So why not keep your eyes open and have a go next year if you didn't get involved in 2013.