Talkback: Wet weather and wildlife
Hi Kate, I saw a Sparrow hawk on my way home from the train ,It was trying to catch a Swallow but the Swallow was to quick,It look's like the Swift's have finally gone,I have seen two Swallow's today not very usual round here,What I took for meadow brown butterflies are Gate keeper's,Quite a lot in the park in the long grass,Still haven't seen any Hedgehog's can't remember the last live one I saw.I have only seen one bat all year so far.Lots of bees in the garden.
Old chippy.
Old chippy.
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Interesting to consider whether this Sparrowhawk might have been a Hobby.
Joe
I have also had a lot of gatekeepers and a few tortoiseshell butterflies here along with whites.
I did the count and also did another one when volunteering with the RSPB in Yorkshire.
I've had alarmingly few butterflies this year
I've had lots of bees, but apparently the very wet weather has had a terrible effect on bees this year:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/9450491/Honey-shortages-as-wet-weather-confines-bees-to-hives.html
Hedgehogs, on the other hand, are rife in my garden. I get at least 4 or 5 a night, but this is because I put mealworms down for them I think. They don't eat all the slugs though, which is a shame!
We have a hedgehog visit most nights - we put down a little dried food for him but try not to overfeed him so that he gets our slugs and snails (and hopefully the vineweevils as well
) . We're getting quite a few bumble bees on the runner bean flowers and we're getting a really good crop, but although the outdoor toms are flowering like mad, not a lot of pollination happening - I'm going out there with a squirrel-hair paintbrush to help things along a bit later this morning when it's really sunny. We've had few butterflies this year, mainly whites large and small, but yesterday we had Meadow Browns and a Gatekeeper and a small Blue, and today we've got honey bees on the echinacea.
I've seen a few hoverflies on the verbena bon. and on the fennel flowers - as this is the first time in probably 20 years that this garden has had summer flowers and veg growing in it, I feel quite encouraged really - given the awful weather we've had I was expecting more pollination problems than this.
On the up side, we've got several happy frogs hopping about in our garden, and as we're not too troubled by slug and snail damage (so far - fingers crossed) I presume they're responsible for helping us out with these.
We get lots of birds in the garden - goldfinches, greenfinches, dunnocks, various tits, robins, chaffinches, blackbirds, blackcaps, willow warbler (I think), house sparrows and starlings, along with collared doves, tame pigeons and wood pigeons - and a few weeks ago a wood pigeon sitting on our roof ridge early one morning was swiftly picked and plucked and taken off to feed some baby sparrowhawks in the belt of conifers over by the golf course.
We also get bats regularly passing through our garden in the evening on their way from their roost in some old chalk workings nearby to the marshes over the other side of the hill from here.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
So nice to hear someone's still getting hedgehogs in their garden.Haven't had any for two years but then other neighbours putting down slug bait(non-organic) probably hasn't helped,even though have given them the names of organic and effective products.Some organic products are a waste of time and money.Growing Success works for me and also the " water in" organisms that attack the slugs under the soil are good.
looking out the train window I see lot's of buddlea on the track side but no butterflie's this has been a poor year for them alright.
Oldchippy.