I’ve already covered the bumblebees in separate post

Butterflies

common blue butterfly  – first seen on 27th may feeding on the cut-leaved cranesbill. (see the yellow rattle post for more about common blues)

meadow brown on rattle pods – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

Meadow brown & Ringlet – didn’t keep much record of numbers but I think there were a lot more around than the previous year. First meadow brown on 12th june. first ringlet on 16th june
Gatekeeper – plenty around, I think of them as mainly on brambles and marjoram June/July but no good records of numbers or dates.
Peacock
Small tortoiseshell – steadily more of them around it seems, no caterpillars seen despite our neighbouring nettle beds.  Maybe I need to do some cutting back of nettles to encourage fresh growth which is what I think they like.
Red Admiral – plenty seen but no particular records kept
Comma – seen regularly but no records, usually basking on bare soil.
Large skipper –  on 22/24 june
Small skipper – First seen 12 june.  I don’t think there were as many as previous year… I’d guess at maximum count of 10 or so (but this is just on the 4 x 4 metre mini meadow).. often nectaring or sunning  (or establishing territory?) on ragwort.

small skipper on bristly oxtongue – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

small skipper on rattle seedpods – 2014-06-26

small skipper on rattle pods 2014-06-26

Brimstone – only really noticed in the early days of spring.
Whites – no serious notes made… there is that time in august/september when they seem to floating around like blown paper scraps…
Speckled wood – first of year on 15th april…

Moths –
No moth trapping this year and only really paying any attention to the more showy species.
Seemed like a lot more cinnabar moths including some egg laying on the ragwort. I’ve a note on them for the first time on 14th June… and garden tigers the same day (lots around the 22nd june). We seem to have lots of the tigers … whizzing frenetically around quite high on summer evenings… last year I managed to see one gradually narrow its orbit until it found a female resting on an elder leaf, presumably transmitting pheromones that he was locking on to.
Only one or two burnet moths and no sign of egg laying.

burnet moth – 2014-06-22

Dragonflies –

broad-bodied chaser – allotment bristol – 2014-06-12 18.35

2 female broad-bodied chasers on 12 june.

Lots of southern hawkers emerged from the pond along with azure and large red damsels as well as common darters. These don’t really feature on the ‘meadow’. Migrant hawkers  are over the allotments from august (?) on.

large red damselfy emergence – gouache – A4 sketchbook

large red damselfy emergence – ink pen – A4 sketchbook

Highlight of the year birdwise was this cuckoo on 1st may. Seemed extraordinary… in continuous rain I kept thinking I could hear cuckoo from the studio, but couldn’t believe it… thought it might be someone playing around with speakers. Took a very long time to track it down to the top of beech tree, well hidden in the canopy. It was there all day, presumably grounded by the rain. With so much focus on African migrants earlier in the year it seemed all the more amazing that this bird would probably have been in the Congo a few weeks earlier.

cuckoo singing in beech in heavy rain – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

swifts – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

swifts arrived over house on 3rd may
I trot out to look each time the herring gulls make a particular alarm call that says there is a raptor overhead. Usually it is a buzzard coasting over… peregrines have usually shot straight through with a flock of pigeons floundering in their wake…but occasionally watched spiralling high.  Just once (or twice?) a kite drifting eastwards towards Bath in a purposeful kind of way.
Surprisingly little that I can think of to note down about the smaller birds. Finches have deserted our bird table… I did have one lovely eyeful of greenfinch male feeding on borage… zinging green, yellow & blue but never making it to the paintbrush.
Goldfinches are ever present at least in the ears… often up in the tops of beech, birch or larch… also making use of the great variety of seeding plants up on the allotments.
Willow warblers make their fleeting appearance in early april (6th i noted), coinciding with the air drizzling green.
Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps are around… Blackcaps all year now.
Green woodpecker is often on the allotment and I’m nurturing ant hills for their benefit. Great spots are in the garden.

green woodpecker – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

We still have masses of sparrows, though there is a season (late summer?) where they disappear and I think we may have lost them… but then they come back in mid winter (?).

31 Mar 2014 buying the bee id app. By NatureGuides Ltd.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bumblebees-britain-ireland/id657077156?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D8

having seen boldly marked bumblebee this morning. Seems like it is Bombus hypnorum the tree bumblebee. One of the 6 commonest spp. Probably a queen… very black abdomen with white tip… ginger thorax the most striking feature.

Following on from this I started to get familiar with our regular bees. The app. is really well designed I think and has helped me to learn the basics very quickly.

Buff-tailed (terrestris)–  is probably our commonest bumblebee and it seems like you can see them in any month nowadays…. I watched them on the yellow rattle and where the garden bumblebee (horturum) would whizz from one rattle flower to another (with its tongue lolling) terrestris would be slow moving and I think they had to get to the nectar through the back door… certainly they did with the comfrey flowers (most of which had holes cut in the back to allow access to these bigger shorter tongued bees).  A lumbering bear compared to hortorum.

garden bumblebee (bombus horturum) with tongue hanging

early Bombus pascuorum… mainly remember these on comfrey and on the garden plant Nectaroscordum (a garlic type) . They are really distinctive, small and fast moving,  with sulphur yellow bands and the end of the abdomen a hairy egg yolk orange.

I don’t remember seeing many red-tailed (lapidarius)… a big queen throbbing on the outside of the studio…. should have made notes though… can’t be sure there weren’t more.

common carder bumblebee (pascuorum)… probably the second commonest after buff-tailed and they really liked the yellow rattle.

tree bumblebee (hypnorum) was also really common, another one using the back entrance of the comfrey and they were on bramble quite a bit. They also seemed to be round the front of the house a lot (on the street), that is quite a sun trap.

I was never convinced that I’d seen white- tailed (lucorum)… so it seemed like we have 6 species in good numbers. I’ll try and keep better track of when they are active in 2015.  Only seen the odd buff-tail so far (mid feb).

think this must be garden bumblebee on comfrey – 26th may

carder bumble on rattle

I’ve promised myself that I would document the development of the mini meadow on our allotment… so a little series of posts that will be more natural history than art in content.

Until 2014 there had just been a couple of common orchid spikes up on the plot. These are showy and easy to spot even early in the season. Panthers in the undergrowth.

29 Mar 2014- Finding a second orchid growing alongside the lower one from last year . Red kite flying over about 11 o’clock going east..

photo 6th april

One of the two spikes had doubled up, but looking like it might come from the same ‘tuber’. Don’t know if that’s possible.

Then on an even more micro meadow that I’ve got going in the garden I spotted what looked like another tiny orchid.

The garden orchid – photo 7th april

Scouring the allotment meadow I then found another 10 or so of these putative orchids. Even more puny than this one.

one of the 10 or so ‘baby’ orchids – photo 11th april

Searching online I couldn’t find anything that told me about the details of the common spotted orchid life cycle. In the end I stumbled on text in the emorsgate seeds catalogue that helped get my head around what might be happening.
the first few years after germination are spent underground… then in years 3-5 leaves will get above ground… years 4 to 8 finally flowering.
I think we’ve let the orchids flower for 3 years now (they were previously all getting unwittingly mowed off). They produce microscopic pollen which is dustlike. This then has to encounter a specific fungus to germinate and get nutrients. The first 3 years underground gradually forming some kind of tuber.
If the Emorsgate catalogue is right then the leaves as in photo above (they never amounted to much more than this) are probably in year 4 of the new plants existence and just starting to become more independent of the fungus.

orchid spikes surrounded by yellow rattle

After they’d set seed I cut off the stalks and distributed the ‘dust’ both on the garden patch and the farthest flung parts of the ‘meadow’ hoping that they’ll proliferate…. but now knowing that the results won’t be apparent for at least 3 years.

With hindsight a bit annoyed with myself that I didn’t make more effort to sketch the way things developed on ‘the meadow’. As it was I got preoccupied with acrylic painting using stencils that in the end seemed pretty stodgy. Happier with the monoprints and learning some new ways of handling the ink in the process.

common spotted orchid & oxeye daisy III – – monotype –  sold

common spotted orchid & oxeye daisy II  – monotype

common spotted orchid & oxeye daisy – – monotype – sold