Holly blues breeding in the garden

When we first came to live in Co. Durham in 1975 several butterflies that I had been familiar with in the south of the country were nowhere to be seen. Commas had been extinct here for a century and speckled woods, small skippers and ringlets were very uncommon. Since then they have all become common and speckled woods even breed in my garden. 

But in all that time holly blues remained rare. Until 2014, when I found one under the Byker viaducts in Newcastle, of all places, I hadn't seen any. Then in 2017 I saw another in Sunderland.

This year they turned up in my garden in Durham in spring and it's clear that they must have laid eggs on the holly hedge, because the summer generation has now emerged. This one seemed attracted to a few alkanet flowers that were still in bloom in the garden, but it has also been nectaring on devil's bit scabious, marjoram and thyme flowers. 

I'm hoping that this will be the start of a long-lasting colony here. There were numerous other reports on Twitter of holly blues in the North east this spring.

The change in fortunes of these five butterfly species here suggests that the theory that climate change, bringing a lengthening breeding season, is a factor allowing them to extend their range northwards might well be true.

Enoplognatha ovata, the Common Candy-striped spider

I've been cultivating this garden for over 30 years and this is the first year that I've noticed these exquisite little candy-striped spiders Enoplognatha ovata

I might have missed them entirely, because in late July and early August they hide under leaves, guarding a ball of eggs that's covered in vivid blue silk.  But I must have carried them to the garden waste recycling bin in some plants that I'd cut down from an overgrown corner of the garden, because when I lifted the lid the next day several had climbed up, carrying their eggs, and were sitting around the rim of the bin.

I rescued them on my gardening glove and had an opportunity to watch their devoted care for their unborn young, carrying them around under their body in a search for a new, safe incubation site. The mother in the photo above is in defensive mode, waving her front legs at me.

So far I've rescued about a dozen of these spiders and released them in the strawberry patch, where they immediately carried their eggs under the leaves and used silken threads to draw the edges of the leaf together.

There are three colour morphs of this spider, including this one with a plain white abdomen. The third form has a single broad red stripe down the middle of the upper surface of its abdomen, but I haven't found that one yet.

You can find more information on this charming arachnid, and speculation about the possible survival significance of the three different colour morphs, at this British Arachnological Society web page.

If there is a moral to this story it is that, if you send garden waste for recycling, it's a good idea to check around the top of the bin before it's collected, because this is where small animals that have been accidentally thrown out with the herbage often take refuge. 

It's an ill wind, etc., etc.

Bad weather sometimes brings unusual birds into our small suburban garden, but this moorhen that arrived the morning was a real surprise. We are a mile from anything that could be described as moorhen habitat, with a lot of roads and housing in between, so it must have been flying over and just dropped in.

First it had a mooch around the flower beds, then ....

...... failed to find anything interesting on the snow-covered lawn ....

.... so then it came right up to the house to pick up food that had fallen from the bird table. I hoped that it might fly up there so I could honestly boast that 'we had a moorhen on our bird table' - but no luck.

So then it just ambled down the garden path .....

.... leaving a distinctive set of arrow-shaped footprints in the snow, 

then ....

.... paused to glance into the pond, which was covered with an inch of ice, before disappearing into the garden next door.

Lacewing larva

I found this tiny lacewing larva, which was about 3mm. long, on the surface of a pear in our garden. If it hadn't scuttled away when I reached out to pick the pear I would never have spotted it.

Lacewing larvae, equipped with long, needle-sharp jaws, are predators of small insects like greenfly and they have a particularly gruesome habit. When they've sucked all the nutrients from their prey they impale their victim's empty corpse on the hairs on their back.

As the lacewing larva grows larger the pile of corpses grows until the larva is hidden under a coat of dead prey. You can see those lethal jaws a little more clearly in this view ....

.... and here's a more tightly cropped view of the head and jaws.

Useful natural pest control for any garden. Glad to have them around.

Ladybirds

It's been a good year for ladybirds in our garden - here's a selection of the species that have visited so far:

2-spot ladybird

7-spot ladybird

10-spot ladybirds

Melanic 10-spot ladybird - black and red colours reversed

Cream-spot ladybird

Orange ladybird

14-spot ladybird


Most of these appeared on blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes - probably because both have been infested with aphids and mildew that are eaten by various ladybird species.

Mid-winter Pond Dipping

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about freshwater invertebrates that remain active all through the winter. There may be no bees or butterflies about at the moment, but there are plenty of aquatic animals to look at - the only problem is that the water is bone-numbingly cold, so collecting them can be a bit of an ordeal! 

All the animals below (except the bottom one) were found in a single jam jar of water, dredged along the edge of our garden pond which had been frozen over on the previous night.

This is a freshwater orb-cockle Sphaerium sp. There must the hundreds of these little bivalves (the largest was about 8mm. across) in our pond. The two pink protruding tubes on the left are the inhalent and exhalent siphons that circulate water over the gills. You can just see the muscular foot protruding through the shell valves in the 5 o'clock position. 

Orb-cockles are surprisingly mobile, especially when they are small. This one, whcih was about 4mm. long, is using its muscular foot (which you can see protruding from the back of the shells) to scoot across the bottom of the container.

There are scores of these red ramshorn snails in our pond but it's providing difficult to identify it precisely. I posted the pictures on the excellent iSpot web site and there are varying opinions as to its identify. It might be Planorbis corneus rubrum or it could be Planorbella duryi which is the American ramshorn snail. Either way it's an introduced species that probably came in with pond weed bought from a garden centre.

If there are scores of ramshorn snails, then there must be many thousands of these flatworms (Polycelis nigra?) in our garden pond - there were over 50 in a single jam jar sample. They glide along like magic carpets, propelled by a covering of beating cilia which you can see on a marine species by clicking here.

Our pond has a thick layer of decomposing leaves at the bottom - perfect conditions for water slaters (aka water hog-lice), so there are large numbers present.

Gammarid shrimps like these prefer well oxygenated flowing water so our somewhat stagnant pond is far from ideal, but there are still plenty present in the shallows and they are very active swimmers, making them difficult to photograph.  Mostly they swim on their sides, or sometimes upside down, curling up when they are alarmed. These have an interesting history - I introduced them from a population that I rescued from the bottom of Wearmouth Colliery before it closed; you can read the details here.

The young gammarids are almost transparent - I think this must be a male, judging from those prominent claws on the front pair of legs.

And finally, this animal (below) is not from our pond. I collected it a few days ago from the gravelly bottom of a ditch, with snow melt water flowing over it, on the edge of the moors at St. John's near Wolsingham in Weardale, and it's ........

...... an exquisite little caddisfly larva, with a tube constructed mostly from quartz grit. They can be coaxed to build their tubes from more exotic materials - for a stunning example, click here

Grow-your-own wild bird food

Time to start feeding the birds again, which must be even more satisfying if you grow your own sunflower seed for feeding finches..............  

I noticed these magnificent giant sunflower seed heads drying in a garden at Blanchland yesterday. Made me wish I'd grown some too. 

Next year.....................

Does a wood pigeon's breeding season ever end?

This mother and child combo turned up outside our living room window this morning. Wood pigeons have been breeding in the garden for several years, but I think this is the latest-ever squab. It must have left the nest during the gales and driving rain over the last couple of days, but seems to be in good fettle, pestering the life out of its mother.

More scenes from wood pigeon family life here.

The relentless rise of the wood pigeon as a garden bird has been a notable ornithological trend over the last decade. It's now the fifth most frequent bird species in gardens. In many ways wood pigeons are charming, especially during their courtship, but they are the bird equivalent of a Hoover on a bird table, gobbling up the food at a phenomenal rate. 

In praise of some non-natives

Wildlife gardening evangelists frequently exhort us to plant native species in our gardens - quite rightly, as there are indeed many native plants that are decorative and provide valuable resources for insects and their larvae. 

But when it gets to this point in autumn the choice of flowering natives is pretty narrow. There's ivy, which is certainly a terrific source of pollen and nectar for insects and also food plant for holly blue butterfly larvae, but that's about it  - other that a few late hogweed flowers and yarrow, which flower up until the first frosts but don't bring much colour to a garden.

So that's when Michaemas daisies Aster amellus, whose natural range extends across southern Europe into Asia, come into their own. Whenever the sun shines the Michlaelmas daisies in our garden attract a constant stream of visitors, including ....





.... hoverflies, like this Heliophilus pendulus

..........honeybees ......

.............. small tortoiseshells ............

.............and red admirals, all photographed in the space of a few minutes at the end of last week.

Marigold Calendula officinalis, which originated in southern Europe, provides similar services for butterflies throughout autumn.

Buddleia davidii, the famous butterfly bush from Central China and Japan, has - until recently - been a favourite amongst wildlife gardeners as a nectar source for butterflies, even though it usually finishes flowering long before the late autumn generation of small tortoiseshells, peacocks, red admirals and commas get into their stride. These days conservationists give B.davidii the thumbs down, on account of its invasive tendencies, but there is a much better Buddleia alternative - B x weyeriana, which is an interspecific hybrid between B.davidii and B.globosa and has very attractive pinkish-orange flowers and none of its parent's tendency to seed itself around prolifically. It's extremely hardy and continues to flower long after the first frosts, offering a 'last-chance saloon' for any insects that need to top up with nectar before going into hibernation.