Potted slow worm!

We have new neighbours and they invited us round to discuss their plans for the garden. Then they asked if I was scared of snakes. I said no, so they led me to a plant pot in which this lovely silvery-blue slow worm was dozing. Mrs Neighbour said she wasn't keen on anything snakelike, so I carefully carrying it home and released it next to the old butler sink that is sunk into the lawn, where I know a slow worm used to live. To my delight, it seemed to love its new home and whisked itself underneath in no time at all.

The friendly robin

Every garden has one - a robin that stalks you whenever you're digging soil or raking leaves, its sharp eyes ready to spot the faintest wiggle of a worm or the scurrying of a bug. Today, this one sat on a twig watching as I picked apples. I put out some morsels from a bag of 'robin food' and after eyeing it for a short time, it flew down and helped itself.

Magpie Moth

When I spotted this pretty creature fluttering against the window, at first I thought it was a butterfly. But when it settled with wings spread, I realised it was probably a moth. I had never seen one like it before, so I took a photo, then released it into the garden.

I
t wasn't until I zoomed in on the photo that I noticed the rust-coloured spots. This enabled me to identify it in my field guide as a Magpie Moth. Common in gardens and hedgerows, it flies from June to August and is disliked by gardeners as it likes to lay its eggs on gooseberry and currant bushes, which then get decimated by the hungry caterpillars!

Swifts off soon?

Today, I counted a shrieking crew of twelve swifts, massing together then scimitaring through the sky, arcing between houses, flicking sideways through trees, then soaring back up into the blue.

I have noticed that the ants always pick a hot, thundery day, usually at the end of July or start of August, to swarm. I have just been out and they are swarming now, two weeks early. The swifts usually leave soon after gorging their fill on ants carried upwards on thermals, so I think we shall soon have to bid these glorious acrobats of the sky farewell till next May. The skies will seem quiet and empty without them.

The birds and the bees

My partner was kneeling at the back of the pond, doing something to the pond filter, when his knee started vibrating. He shifted it and to his amazement, several bumble bees flew out from underneath. He had been kneeling right on the entrance to their nest which has been cleverly positioned in the roots of a plant. Last week, the white hebe bush was in flower and it was completely buzzing, absolutely alive with bees. Now the purple hebe is out, and the honeysuckle too, so the bees still have plenty of nectar.

Don't they have a splendid doorway?

Now for the birds. There is a huge flock of starlings roosting somewhere not far away. We often get more than thirty in the garden at once. The suet balls are very popular and they can strip the feeder in ten minutes. Here is a bunch of them queuing for their turn.

The collective noun for starlings should be a clamour, not a murmuration!

Last but not least, here is a cure ring-necked parakeet swinging on the peanuts.

Bye-bye Butterfly?

When I was small, I used to listen to Nursery Singsong on the radio and there was one song that always made me cry. It had a plaintive melody which was repeated in a different key, and the words, sung by a lady with a very pure voice, were:

Bye-bye butterfly
Born in a bower
Christened in a teapot
And drownded in a shower

Tears would cascade down my cheeks as I thought of that poor butterfly, although I didn't understand what 'christened in a teapot' was all about. I still don't!

The old song sprang to my mind today as I stood in the garden lamenting the lack of butterflies. Back in 1997 when I first started spending most of my time in Hillingdon, there were so many of them that for a season I kept a Butterfly Diary, logging all the species I saw. Peacocks were always the first to appear, followed by Orange Tips, Brimstones, Holly Blues, Gatekeepers, Commas, Meadow Browns, Cabbage Whites, Red Admirals, Fritillaries...the list goes on.

Well, the plants in the garden are still the same. The farm fields at the bottom are still there. Yet the butterflies have gone and I can only blame the dreadful winters. After the freezing cold one of 2011-2012, we counted five dead Peacock butterflies in the garage, frozen to death whilst overwintering. This spring I have only seen one, a very battered specimen. I have seen a couple of Orange Tips and a few small blues. That's it. I can only hope that a few more will appear during the summer, but I fear that those that didn't freeze during the winter have been 'drownded' in the extremely wet spring showers. I am very sad as, along with dragonflies, I find butterflies the most delightful and magical of all the insects.

(Photo taken in July 2012 of Red Admiral sunning its wings on a paintbrush on the windowsill)

A helping hand for the fox family

The cubs race around the garden so fast that it's hard to take a decent photo. But it's good to see them both doing so well. The odd thing is, a second vixen, whose coat is a darker colour, seems to be helping their mum bring them up. There's no sign that she is feeding cubs of her own. I wonder if she's a sibling of the cub's mother, or one of last year's cubs who failed to found a family of her own? She is so shy that the moment you raise the camera, she's off, speeding into the bushes.

Often, the second vixen is the one who appears first, like the lookout, checking that it's OK for the cubs to appear. Then you see a cheeky little face and the bolder cub ventures onto the lawn, followed by cub number two and Mum. Haven't seen Dad for a while. Perhaps, knowing that the family are being helped, he has gone on his way.