6/11/10: Hyde Park - birds and Southern Oak Bush Cricket

A nice afternoon in Hyde Park with LNHS friends Miriam and her daughter Celeste.

Celeste is great at spotting 'bugs', and noticed this female Southern Oak Bush Cricket on the underside of one of the hundreds of London Plane leaves lying on the ground.

Good views were had of a foraging Green Woodpecker.

On the Serpentine were: two Mute Swans, two young Great Crested Grebes, Mallards, Tufted Ducks, Pochard, a male Shoveler, Canada Geese, Greylag Geese and a number of Black-headed Gulls.

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