2/9 - 20/9/10: Barnehurst garden wildlife round-up

More records from my north Barnehurst garden. Bit of an upturn in moth species at the windows after dark lately. Plus second year of Southern Oak Bush Cricket records - a flightless species that is somehow spreading considerably.

2/9 :-

* Southern Oak Bush Cricket in a potted Rush plant

3/9 :-

* Slow Worm under black plastic bag on pile of dry vegetation for the first time in a few checks over the summer months
* 5 Long-tailed Tits foraging
* Male Southern Oak Bush Cricket nymph on Euonymus japonicus hedge after dark
* A rather worn and rather 'late' Wormwood Pug moth (I've got some seed-raised Wormwood plants in pots in the garden ....)
* 1 x Vine's Rustic moth
* 1 x male Willow Beauty moth

4/9 :-

* 1 x male Orange Swift moth

5/9 :-

* Female Southern Oak Bush cricket on Euonymus japonicus hedge after dark

Female Southern Oak Bush cricket (2009 photograph)

10/9 :-

* 1 x fresh Speckled Wood butterfly
* An adult Slow Worm on each of the two plastic-bag-covered piles of dry vegetation
* Field Mouse in compost heap

12/9 :-

* 1 x Blood-vein moth
* 1 x Square Spot Rustic moth

13/9 :-

* A Green Shieldbug nymph

15/9 :-


* Both Slow Worms under the same bag (above photo)
* 2 Wood Pigeons

16/9 :-

* An Elephant Hawk moth caterpillar on the ground, seeking a pupation site

20/9 :-

* 1 x Speckled Wood buttefly (above - basking on the arm of a plastic garden chair)
* 1 x Small White butterfly

28/5/10: Baby Slow Worm and Damselfly in the garden

This sub-1 year-old Slow Worm under a rock at the top end of the garden is an encouraging sign of ongoing breeding in the area :-

My Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) plants, raised from seed collected on the local golf course, were looking in fine fettle today and are good for Bees :-

There was also a Blue-tailed Damselfly in the garden today as well as a couple of Long-tailed Tits, and 7 Ring-necked Parakeets were seen in the Silver Birches down the hill.

27 + 28/3/10: Garden Gorse flowers, first Slow Worm sighting

The first of the flowers on the Gorse I planted in the front garden to fill a gap in the hedge opened on the 27th. If you haven't got up close and personal with Gorse before, do have a sniff - the bright yellow blooms smell just like coconut. Gorse is one of those shrubs that will shoot from old wood, a characteristic that makes it good for hedging (Yew will do the same), and is used as such, especially in Ireland. Being prickly it's stock proof and, in a more domestic environment yob-proof, apart from the fact it burns quite easily. It's also good for early bees.

I checked my black-plastic-bags-over-a-mound-of-dry-vegetation habitat features today for the first time in a while and, despite the weather being cool and changeable, with only a little sun, the first Slow Worm of the year, a modestly-sized adult, had its back pressed up against the underside of the plastic on the pile that was most favoured during 2009. It looked to be a different individual from at least three of the four seen in the garden last year.

I have continued to build piles of branches, dryish prunings of herbaceous plants and 'weeds' under shrubs in places too dry and dark for anything else to grow, so as to increase suitable sites for Slow Worms to take shelter in, and to provide food and cover for various invertebrates. In sunnier spots of a similar kind I have been making additional hiding places using 'neat' looking chunks of stone-studded concrete 'rubble'.

It's a fortunate accident that the black plastic Slow Worm residences of choice happen to be in a section of the garden that contains plants molluscs don't make a mess of. They're out in force again all of a sudden after mild weather and several rainy days, so as part of my torch-lit 'biological control' ops, the slugs and smaller snails are being translocated to to Slow Worm central ........

17/8/09: Barnehurst BAP priority species

Three national Biodiversity Action plan priority species today.

Grasmere allotment site:

Insects: Several Gatekeepers, 1 x male Common Blue, 30+ Dock Squash Bugs on the Rhubarb patch and 1 x Common Darter Dragonfly - my first of the year.

4 Common Lizards (BAP priority species) on my Dad's plot - 1 adult and 3 small 'baby' animals. One of the latter was basking on one of the tyres I salvaged from rubbish dumped over the boundary fence by irresponsible neighbouring home-owners. The other 3 were basking on bits of rubble, again 'recycled' from material found on site. One of these babies had already lost the whole of its tail. It would be interesting to know what it is that predates the lizards here.

My Barnehurst Garden - 2 more BAP priority species:

I was delighted to find 2 Slow Worms together under one of my dry-vegetation-covered-with-black-plastic piles, specially constructed to attract and allow easy examination of this species.

In addition, the first Common Toad seen here for quite some time was in the garden, a 3" body length individual being found after dark in my new greenhouse .

23/7/09: Old Lady visits as reptile 'returns'

The female Slow Worm was back on the placcy bag-covered heap in my garden today, after quite a few days AWOL.



And this Old Lady moth (Mormo maura) was found in the lounge this afternoon. It's a locally distributed species whose larvae feed on Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), and other shrubs and trees.

3/7/09: Slow Worm in compost heap. More moths.

Found a Slow Worm in the wooden garden compost bins in my Barnehurst garden for the first time ever. A large male, blue-spotted and with an undamaged tail, on top of material emptied out of flower pots and directly under a black plastic sheet that keeps the moisture in to aid rotting. I've seen Slow Worms under carpet tiles, in soggy kitchen scraps sweltering in the heat of the noon-day sun, in compost bins on my former allotment site in Bristol. But they had slatted sides with gaps in them. Not sure how this chap got into mine, which are fairly solid all round. At any rate, he'd worked his way to 32" above ground level ..... That makes three different individuals in the last few weeks, with the animal in one of the piles deliberately designed to attract them (see 24th June posting) still there.

After a run of poor nights, there were a few larger moths at the lounge window tonight.



Small Magpie (Eurrhypara hortulata) feeds mainly on nettles, but also Horehound (plenty of Black Horehound around here) and Mints, of which I have a collection of varieties in the garden.



Not totally convinced I've got the ID right, but this may be The Clay (Mythimna ferrago). Had much darker, dusky-brown (under fluorescent light) hind-wings.

Also a Cabbage Moth (Mamestra brassicae).