Other Garden Goings on

Besides the pond life and butterflies, there have been a number of other intresting things in the garden over the course of the hot spell. Most of them involve small insects that require some looking for, but one of the best is the juvenile robin that we have had around. On one occasion, it even came and landed on the window ledge for the feeders there, whilst I was sat next to the window, so I was less than 1 meter away from it.

-Juvenile Robin
Besides the robin, our annual snipe-fly appearance has begun, when hundreds of these flies can be found everywhere. That being said, before I have never taken a photo, so this time I decided that it should not remain that way any longer, so I snapped this one on the garage wall.

-Snipe Fly
Another insect I spotted whilst I was sat on the lawn was this click beetle. Not much to say about it really, but as i have said before, its one of my favourite beetles, so I have included these photos, inclding one showing it with its wings open.

-Click Beetle 
On the last night of sun, I saw a rather large zebra spider on the roof. By large I mean large for a Zebra spider, as it was still only about half a centimeter long. Either way, its something that i had wanted a photo of for a while, and only now had the oppertunity arisen. They are great to watch, as they hop around, and if you move they turn and stare right at you with their great big eyes. This one was no exception, only because it was a bit bigger, I was able to get some better photos.

-Zebra Spider

The Garden Large Red Damselflies

And in the hot weather, we had our large red damselflies around. They came in sparsely at first, only one, which iddnt tend to stick around, but by the end of the hot spell, we had four at once, and another had been eaten by frogs, so 5 overall, including ovipositing pairs and territory holding males, which were all great to watch as they went about their lives on the pond. we had pairs ovipositing in the top and bottom ponds, but we only had one female over the two weeks, which would have been a problem for the 3 males at any one time.







Garden Orange Tip

There have been a number of butterflys around over the course of the hot spell, one of which were the Orange tips, which were once again reluctant to stick around for a photo. Other butterflies included small tortoiseshell, large and small whites. Luckily for around 5 minuets, we did have an orange tip in the back garden one afternoon. It was a female, and chose awkward places to land, so the photos are not great, but its another record shot for my files. see the photos below.



The garden frogs in the may heat

Due to the recent hot spell, we have had plenty of frogs in the pond, I assume trying to keep cool. On one day, we had seven frogs in the bottom pond, and another in the top pond. We also had the novelty of one frog going down the waterfall from top pond to bottom pond. On most days, we have had around 5 frogs in total, which is the kind of number we would expect when they were breeding. They have been great company in the back yard. On a night, we would often get at least one frog that left the pond, that could be found round its edge. One night we had a frog mauling a slug, and squaring up to another frog, which was pretty cool to see.

Pond Skaters in the May heat

With the hot weather, most of my none revision time has been spent outside, taking photos of the wildlife we have had in our graden pond. I decided to try and take some shots of pondskaters, so that I had some for record. Here are the best of my shots...