Saturday 23 August 2008

Dunsford Wood

This morning we visited the Devon Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Dunsford:


The reserve has 6 species of fritillary and the rare wood cricket. Today we saw many insects including two species of cricket:



male dark bush cricket


female dark bush cricket

male speckled bush cricket

Friday 22 August 2008

Dragonflies

Another dragonfly species arrived in our garden today - the migrant hawker. We had two females - one on the damson tree and the other on the house wall.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

Caterpillars


This was supposed to be a blog about vegetables, but after experimenting with lots of different varieties this year we've found that due to the combined efforts of slugs and butterflies we're going to be growing mostly root vegetables next year.

For the last few weeks whenever it's not been raining the white butterflies have been fluttering about, laying batch after batch (or is it a brood when it isn't fish?) of eggs. We no longer have any brussels sprouts to speak of, nor cabbages. I have one ornamental cabbage left and the only reason that has not been eaten is because it is next to 2 large sprout plants. We have therefore decided to abandon our above ground vegetable crop and to grow caterpillars instead. We're doing very well at raising caterpillars.








Tuesday 12 August 2008

Calla lilies (again)

More calla lilies. I love how the plants sometimes seem confused as to what shall be a flower and what shall be a leaf - resulting in some very pretty leaves.



I broke off part of the pink calla


to give to Dad, but it reverted to yellow rather than pink. Still, the yellow is very pretty.



Friday 8 August 2008

Bye bye bush

This week, Ian cut down the bush in our back garden. It has been a lovely feature during the last year and has provided cover for both mammals and birds, but it didn't feature in our long term plans. Once we have dug out the roots we shall plant a damson tree just to the left of where it stood.


The garden looks so much bigger now.

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Autumn


It's been cooler and wetter this last few days and something about the breeze has made it feel like autumn here in Exeter. Not that I'm ready for autumn quite yet - I was hoping for a late summer to complement the early summer that we had (mid-summer having been very wet), but I am looking forward to it more now that there's a lovely fungus on a log by the pond.

Darters

The last week has been wet and poor for wildlife in general, but I was very pleased to see a pair of darters at the weekend, especially since the female was ovipositing. They didn't settle, but I was able to get a video of their activity (too large to post here I'm afraid).