I'm not really sure what happened to August...it seemed to come and go extremely fast! I guess this was also not helped by the fact that work was crazy busy [thanks Festival] and we did go away for a week...but still...
The clover patches are really thriving now, its true they [the clovers] do seem to cope better with the weather, be it dry or too wet! Both the red and crimson (right) varieties are flowering now, so hopefully they'll spread some seeds...if the sparrows don't get to them first. Flocks of young sparrows have been having a blast playing in and out of the patches, having the odd peck of the leaves here and there.
Other things that have been 'having a blast' were the two remaining bottles of elderflower champagne which sadly succummed to the extremly humid weather we had a the start of the month (bottom, left). Interestingly both 2 litre plastic bottles exploded along the vertical 'seam' one after the other, then the white plastic tub I'd contained them in exploded as well...Probably scared a few neighbours in addition to the wildlife. Although some wasps seemed to enjoy the fallout.
Somebody left us an offering? gift? of a shiny and well used steel scouring pad which was dropped into a gutter at the front of the house (below). The fact that it had fallen so perilously close to the down pipe meant that I had to get the ladder out and remove it by hand before it clogged the system. I suspect it may have been a magpie, but perhaps that's just racial stereotyping and was actually migratory butterfly with well meaning intentions.
I had an intriguing experience with an unusual catepillar which we found on a neighbours cherry tree (below). I took it [plus the leaf it was on] and placed it in a jar with some other cherry/apple leaves, although it appeared like it was trying to pupate and wrap itself in the leaf - which was why I put it in the jar, I thought it would be interesting to see it pupate. Turns out it was a Grey Dagger moth caterpillar and it wasn't trying to pupate - or at least, not yet. It completely stripped the leaf, leaving only the stalk - proper Hungry Caterpillar mode. So I filled up the jar with more leaves.
At one point in the experiement, the catepillar escaped from the jar [I'd left the lid off as I'd wrongly assumed it would stay where the food was] and there was a rather fraught 10 minutes with me lifting up various objects rather gingerly [as it had some surprisingly long spikes/whiskers all over its body]. The runaway was duly recaptured and returned to the jar. A few days after this it appeared to have died, as there was only the skin of the catepillar in the jar, along with several bright red 'capsules' about 1/2 cm long. So I took all the leaves out and assumed that was the end of it. A week late, after coming back from holiday, there on the window, was an adult Grey Dagger moth [which I released outside].
To this day I have no idea where it went to pupate or how it got there. When I removed the leaves from the jar, I put them outside so it wasn't on them. After some internet searching it turns out the red 'capsules' are actually meconium (or pupal fluid), which is an excess of the caterpillar that the butterfly doesn't need. This more commonly appears as 'blood' once the insect emerges from the cocoon so again I'm not sure why it appeared differently here!
In the back garden we've been getting the usual fox and a couple of hedgehogs. One of the hogs is a bit of a chonk, while the other has a nose like a well-sharpened pencil and has humongous feet! I think its the latter of these two that is absolutely obsessed with peanuts to the extent that on nights when I remember to bring the peanut feeder inside, he [uncertain of actual sex] will scour the garden for something to whet his appetite, even if that means digging up the peanuts that the squirrels have buried! I doubt the day squad (below) are impressed by these antics!
One of the hogs is getting pretty confident and appears unperturbed by either the regular fox...
or myself....
Finally a few photos of how much honey bees and hoverflies seem to love tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) flowers. These particular flowers are actually on the allotment, but the ones in the front garden are just as high (almost taller than the cherry tree) and plentiful.
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