Garden + Wildlife

What I see and do outside

[cwcoutside]

June 4th

Rainy day. Lots of blue tit feeding in the trees.

Rescued a black headed cardinal beetle from the pond yesterday.

[cwcoutside]

June 3rd

Iris now has 6 blooms out. Spectacular.

The wrens have left the nest and are bouncing round the summerhouse. Micki wants to play with them :(

The bee tubes are filling up at last. Two are capped.

[cwcoutside]

1st June

Our Bearded Iris bloomed today

[cwcoutside]

MAY 31ST

We had a badger in the garden on Friday, unfortunately our dog quickly chased it away.

The warm dry weather is finally here. Everything is at least a month late. Lupin is out and the iris should be soon - possibly this afternoon.

9 more bees have emerged, only 4 left, not sure they will now tho.

Wrens are very busy feeding in the summer house.

First damselfly on the new pond was a Large Red.

[cwcoutside]

May 26th

First Swallow, flying near the unit in Rudgwick. A beautiful young grass snake swimming in the neighbours pond.

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May 23rd 2021

The cold weather continues, never got above 12c. Very little insect movement apart from the below beetle on the water forget-me-not. It's a Cantharis decipiens a type of soldier beetle that feed on aphids so good to see.

Spotted a couple of Roe deer in the woods by Bentley Copse ~ the one pictured looks very heavy, maybe pregnant?

[cwcoutside]

May 22nd 2021

Weeded the flowerbed a bit, mainly dandy lions. Still no flowers and it's late May.

Potted up some Oregano. Added a new Salvia to replace the hotlips that is really struggling.

Repotted the 2 tomato seedlings ~ binned the rest.

Add some plain cardboard to the compost pole. Apparently that helps.

There's definitely a wren nesting in the old summerhouse.

[cwcoutside]

21st May 2021

A wild wet and windy day.

Put some Fringed water lily in the pond. I just plopped it straight in, I think that is what u r meant to do, we will see how it does.

[cwcoutside]

May 20th 2021

Heard a firecrest in the garden. Only saw a glimpse so could positively id it, will keep an eye out.

BlueTits feeding in nest box out front.

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Herb Robert

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Germander Speedwell.

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Bugleherb or bugleweed

[cwcoutside]

May 19th 2021

Because of the cold weather and very few flowers blooming yet, I have left the lawn to grown hoping to encourage daisies and other wildflowers for the bees and other pollinators. 

There are definatley plenty of daisies but also a few others that have appeared all on their own. Germander Speedwell, Bugleherb and Herb Robert are all present.

Out walking the dog ~ can hear a cuckoo. I'll try to get a photo... Not much chance of that.

This little fella showed up in the new wildlife pond, on the water forget-me-not, which has been a bit of a hit. He's a common malachite-beetle apparently, and most welcome.

On the bee front ~I think we had 2males and female energe today. Only about a dozen cocoons left. No sign of any nesting yet, which is a bit of a worry.

[cwcoutside]

Getting up to date

The year so far - It has been a strange year - we have been in lockdown pretty much up to May. The weather started the year warm and dry with temps over 20 somewhen around early March, but then it has been unusually cold since then, with regular frost until early May. This seems to have had a distinct effect on the plants and wildlife. Bluebells are still in full bloom whilst other flowers are seemily really late.There are very few insects about - on the occassional warm sunny days the insects appear and then the next days all dissappear again.

[cwcoutside]

Background

I have a mid sized garden - 14M x 25M (roughly). I’m not a great gardener but recently have been trying to improve it - the kids are now both teenagers and so the need for the garden to be playground is lessening. Having said that we still have a massive trampoline, and large climbing frame with swings, a playhouse and a football net (five-a-side sized). 

So most of the garden is lawn, in pretty bad condition but it serves a purpose. Oh! we have a dog too who uses the lawn for her own business.

So in amongst all this functionallity I am trying to create an attractive wildlife habitat - not a grand one - but just a nod to wildlife. So we have the birdfeeders, nest boxes, a very small wildlife pond, a log pile, a corner near the bike shed that I have thrown some wildflower seeds down, a mason bee nesting tube and a mason bee release box. We created last year a small flowerbed that we try to protect from footballs - the flower bed is a bit of a project and heavily designed to attract wildlife - Bees + Butterflys.

There is a good sized but completely decepit summerhouse at the bottom of the garden - The area behind this is pretty wild and forgotten apart from a compost area. We need to get a new summerhouse really. 

I’ll hopefully cover each area individually on future entries and try to given running updates on them.

[cwcoutside]

18th May

First sighting of a Swift this year. Soaring high above the garden. This is kind of what prompted me to create this blog as I wanted to record this as a reference.

2 red Mason bees have just emerged, 1 m 1 f. 17 left of the 40.

A deer at Bentley copse, real close, no camera.

Very mixed weather. Heavy rain, warm sun and hail tomorrow looks similar.

Thought I might cut some lilac blooms and put near the nesting site.

[cwcoutside]

Outside - Wildlife + Garden

The aim of this blog is record what I see, hear and do outside - with an emphasis on wildlife + plants. Mainly in the Garden, but to include dog walks, the weather, plants, insects, holidays etc. with an emphasis on wildlife + plants.

Hopefully this will be a continue record that I can compare the changing season each year. When plants bloom, insects appear, bird sightings, as the weather has a big influence on these events, I will try to give an indication of recent temperatures, rainfall, sunshine hours.

I intend to post many photos to accompany the text - infact it may end up being photo lead.

Links will be given to other sites that I use including Instagram and iNaturalist

This is primarily for personnal use and is not a search for followers.