Lustful Ladybirds, Mad Moths & Barmy Birds

Lots has been happening in the garden in April!

Water droplet on a lupin leaf

I always try and get some grass weeding done early in the year - its relatively easy to take out of the front flowerbed when the other plants are pretty dormant. I'm sure most of the neighbours think I'm nuts - who takes grass out of a lawn?! [The obvious answer being someone who doesn't want a lawn is apparently too mindblowingly abnormal]. Although I'll cut down some of the dead branches, stalks and stems from last year's flowers; I'll leave some upright for overwintering insects. And the practice seems to be working as the front lawn has loads of ladybirds! [Some getting amorous, see below -NSFW].

Clearly the Easter Bunny has his work cut out and is now outsourcing his operation and employing the local fox population. This perfectly unblemished egg was carefully buried under a pile of strulch [that's mineralised straw mulch, and it's amazing for keeping the ground damp and weedfree]. We are eagerly awaiting the first crop of chickens.

Other findings in the front flowerbed include several of these wonderfully vibrant green caterpillars [above right]. I believe these to be Angle Shades moths (Phlogophora meticulosa) as we've previously seen some in autumn.

Spring flowers have been bursting into bloom what with the lovely warm, sunny weather we've been having! We've a couple of Aquilegias in the front garden [one deep pink, (above) and the other a deep blue]; both of which produced a towering flower spike - and more impressively has not yet blown down. Geums in the front and back gardens came out much earlier than expected and so the bees have been able to complement their regular dandelion diet with something more adventurous.

The humble honey bee hard at work harvesting pollen

Regular readers may remember 'Twiggy' the awesome twig-like caterpillar I 'rescued' from work - exciting news on this front as 'he' hatched! In late autumn/early winter, after forming a chrysalis, I moved 'his' tub to a cooler area of the house - being conscious I didn't want 'him' to hatch out in the middle of winter. However by the end of March I was begining to think 'he' wouldn't emerge - I genuinely thought something had gone wrong and 'he' had died [supposedly you can test whether they're still alive if they can still wiggle the 'tail' - but presumably at somepoint during the process there simply isn't enough of them to collectively organise a 'wiggle'?]

Then, one morning when M and I were sitting in the back room having breakfast, a really unusual vibrating sound started up. After shifting various items and listening to the nearby wall we concluded that it must be caused by large lorries moving at the back of the property [although we get these frequently and yet had never heard this noise before]. M eventually identified that the sound was coming from the moth tub. Twiggy had finally hatched! The noise was caused by him trying to escape the tub! We took some photos and released him outside into the sunshine so he could warm up and be on his merry way.

Check out those fabulous antenna!

After a closer inspection, it was clear I'd been wrong in my identification - it wasn't a feathered thorn moth, but instead a Peppered moth (Biston betularia)! These little guys have some super interesting history with Darwin, the industrial revolution and the introduction of pollution controls.

They are one of the model species when teaching about natural selection; their normal colour pattern is like Twiggy's [a mottle of black and white] this helps them camoflague with certain tree lichens. However there is a melanistic [dark] form, where they are simply black (this obviously does F-all for camoflague when your environment is mottled white). However it was noted during the 19th century that in urban areas, only the dark forms were being observed [by Darwin, amongst others]. This was due to the heavy industrialisation at the time - use of coal fires was literally painting the environment black - putting the darker moths at an advantage over the white-mottled as birds could easily identify the latter. This meant that only the darker forms would live long enough to reproduce, passing the successful gene for the dark colouring on to the next generation.

When air quality started to improve and there was less coal dust coating trees and buildings; the darker form was back at the disadvantage and today most peppered moths retain the mottled colouration. [End of history lesson].

We've been getting a full range of birds including a lovely little pair of coal tits. The woodpigeons have taken up residence on the side fence, the sparrows are dust-bathing like crazy and nest building is underway, with the first few chicks already shrieking from the rooftops. There's starlings over the road, while we've got two sparrow nests [one at the front, by my office; and the other at the back above the bathroom].

The gulls have been coming back - picking up larger chunks of bread, hedgehog food and when they can't find those they've been making dives at the starlings and magpies. The magpies [of which there are definately fewer this year] are still super aggressive - dive bombing groups of starlings for no real reason. The starlings stay away from the big leylandii hedge [where the magpies nest] but the magpies often aggrivate the starlings at the roof spaces - they've got a very specific alarm call which you can easily distinguish from the usual 'liquid' sound they make.

Finally got round to giving the pond a clean out. Autumn's supposedly the best time to clean out ponds, but [a] I'm often busy, [b] its generally freezing and [c] sometimes something is trying to hibernate. I cleaned out all the gunk [technical term there], stuck in a bag of barley straw [from a kind neighbour who had bought too big of a bag] which is supposed to help keep the water clear; and tossed in a couple of handfuls of watercress, along with a new marsh marigold.