Flying visits

Red admiral and peacock

It's peak butterfly time in the garden.  The buddleja is the big attraction, although Big Yellow Thing (now fading) has also been a draw, and the smaller butterflies also like the oregano.  There seem to have been more butterflies than last year, but nowhere near as many as we used to get; but there's a hard core of a few red admirals, some peacocks, a few brimstones (two males and a female, at least), a painted lady, a couple of small tortoiseshells (at last), lots of large whites, and occasional small heath and gatekeepers.  There was also, briefly, one large fritillary; I've never seen one before so can't be sure of exact identification, but it was definitely a fritillary.  I've also logged a holly blue (and now know the difference between that and a common blue, at least if I can see the underside).  And one day we had a hummingbird hawkmoth on the buddleja; haven't seen one for a few years.  Butterflies are a real summer pleasure, and I'm always sorry to see them disappear at the back end of the season.

Rose sawfly caterpillars

Less of a pleasure was finding a couple of rose sawfly caterpillars trying to defoliate my Rosa alba 'Koenigin von Daenemark'.  Fortunately they hadn't done too much damage; it's a rose with very healthy leaves, which was how I spotted the little nuisances in the first place.  Identification from the butterfly book was easy (the real ones are on the left of the photo).  I'm afraid I fed them to the birds.



Our feathered flying visitors are still numerous, although I sense a slight decrease in interest in the food put out for them.  The blackbird and sparrows are still feeding young, but the robins are starting to sort out winter territory (much competitive tick-ticking); the youngest robin is still my great friend, appearing whenever I weed, clear up or do other garden jobs.  He had a bonanza yesterday, when we moved most of the patio pots to allow our builders working space to replace our guttering this week.  I was able to sweep up many months-worth of debris that had collected in the corners, and to cap it all an ants' nest under the step broke up that afternoon and there were flying ants all over the place; the robin clearly thought it was all his birthdays rolled into one.  There are plenty of insects flying around, and the local house martins and swallows are often feeding overhead, though I haven't seen the swifts since late July; theirs is a real flying visit, barely ten weeks long by my reckoning.

My little robin friend ...

... and helping with clearing up

A week or so ago we had a flying visit from a sparrowhawk which landed briefly on the big hook holding up the fatball feeder; fortunately the sparrows saw him at the last minute and bolted.  Barely had he landed, however, than a woodpigeon flew at him and saw him off; he and his mate seem to have a nest in the holly tree and he wasn't taking any chances.  I think it was our lame pigeon Lefty.  I see from my old blog posts that he has been around since at least 2013; he used to rule the roost in the garden but for the last couple of years seems to have been based out in the fields, coming in here only occasionally for water and a little food.  He's a feisty bird - I suppose he has to be, with his bad left leg - but in the past doesn't seem to have had any success in mating.  This year, however, I've seen him with a mate, and a couple of times earnestly carrying bits of twig around as if he's helping build a nest.  Good on you, Lefty.

The building work at roof level involved replacing a bit of broken roof fascia behind which some sparrows had nested this year.  Now that the nesting season is over, we had no compunction about removing the nest: a tangle of dead grass and (mostly pigeon) feathers.  We've also taken down the nestbox for cleaning; the bluetits had a neat mat of grass and moss, with a perfectly round hollow in the middle for the eggs, quite a construction for a pair of little birds.  There's a good number of tits, including great and long-tailed tits, around in the garden; they seem to have had a reasonable breeding season.

Sparrow nest contents

Bluetits' nest

Rosemary in need of attention!

Moving the patio pots was a job that really needed doing.  Several of the plants are badly in need of attention.  The big rosemary, in particular, was partly blocking the patio doors and had rooted down through the pot and into the soil under the flagstones; it really really needs a lot of cutting back or possibly discarding (there are other rosemary plants elsewhere in the garden).  The move also allowed me to spot a plant label under the lilies whose identity was puzzling me the other week, but I'm not sure I'm much the wiser; the label said 'Pink Perfection' but that doesn't match either of the lilies that are in there!

The runner bean plants have succumbed to the slugs (despite the toad, who was found hiding under some nicely damp and rotting wood nearby), and one of the courgette plants is also looking chewed.  The most successful courgette plant (ie the only one actually showing anything edible) is the one planted in a shallow tub on the patio; I need to do that more often, I think.  The tomatoes are now cropping, slowly, and all the aubergines have one little fruit on though I doubt that they will come to much now that summer is coming to a close.  I've started shutting the greenhouse up at nights, as the temperatures are too low; it has been chilly for the last couple of weeks except when the sun is out (which hasn't been too often), and even with the door closed the temperature in there has gone down to 12.4C on at least one occasion.  Apparently one in three UK households have turned the central heating on in the last week! - we are resisting, although we did use an electric heater one evening.  It's supposed to be summer, for goodness' sake.

Whether it's a sign of the weather or not, I don't know; but D saw a redwing in a hedgerow outside the village.  Had it spent the summer here, or is it an early winter migrant?