There is a wolf in my garden!

Lockdown Garden Wildlife - Day 82

Date:  13 June 2020

Location:  Garden, Neath, South Wales
Weather:  Quite warm but cloudy

Who would have thought there were wolves in my garden? Well the Wolf Spider! There are lots of them out at the moment basking in the sun and most of them are carrying egg sacs. They are agile hunters with excellent eyesight and mostly live in solitude and hunt alone. 

Wolf spiders carrying their egg sacks

Wolf spiders are unique in the way they carry their eggs in a sac at the end of their abdomen. Once the spiderlings emerge they clamber up their mother's leg and crowd together on her. They are carried around for several weeks before they are large enough to disperse and fend for themselves. No other spiders are currently know to carry their young on their backs.

(Above and below) Wolf spider with spiderlings

The babies have arrived! Day 1 #30DaysWild

So today is the start of the Wildlife Trust's 30 Days Wild - This will be my 4th year to do it and with my career change (I am now a self-employed freelance designer) I wasn't going to do it.

Then I heard that familiar noise I hear each year - 30+ starlings in the garden! I closed my laptop and ran to get my camera. It was hard to count them all, but the parents had brought the babies and they were rowdy!

The suet pellets and coconut shell was gone within a few hours and they were going nuts for the mealworm. It got so wild and loud at one point I had to just shut the door and try and get back to work.

I am so happy they are back and mad me realise that work should NOT stand in the way of nature, and I will once again carry on with the annual tradition of #30DaysWild

Day 9 - 30 Days Wild - Attracting Moths

* Today's random act of wildness - Attracting Moths *

Seeing I saw a few moths in the garden recently I decided to look on the internet for ways to attract moths in the garden. I found a great recipe for moth syrup on the Wildlife Trust's website and decided tonight I shall give it a go. Click here to see the link yourself :) 

Cinnabar moth in the garden today

Mullein Moth caterpillar - tiny compared to my thumb but will grow quite a bit.

* Here is the Moth Syrup recipe *

You will need:

• A bottle of red wine
• 1 kg Sugar
• Some cloth cut in strips
• Wooden Spoon
• Saucepan

*Note - I halved the recipe *

The ingredients

Step 1 - Pour wine into saucepan

Step 2 - Add the sugar

Step 3 - Stir until all the sugar has dissolved. Take off heat and cool.

Step 4 - Now add the cloth to the wine/sugar mix

Step 5 - Next take the cloth out of the saucepan

Step 6 - Last step hang the strips up in the garden. I have put it on the rotary line,
but you could put them on trees, fences etc...

Now all I have to do is wait until it gets dark to see what turns up...watch this space...

* 2 hour update *

After two hours and when it was dark we went to check on the strips, unfortunately we didn't get any moth's on them, but there was a few small ones flying around. After another half an hour we moved them to the fence at the bottom of the garden where there's a few trees. Again, nothing so we decided to give up on moths tonight...perhaps there was too much of a breeze in the air? Nevertheless we went exploring and came across these critters, including a rather large stone spider...

Centipede

House Spider

A lovely patterned slug

Stone spider enjoying some of the moth syrup that had run down the fence.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

On January 30th & 31st it was the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch - where the whole nation is encouraged to spend one hour in the garden (or local park) to identify and count the different birds that enter the garden.

On Saturday 30th January we took part in my boyfriend's house in Swansea. The weather was surprisingly calm and partial sunny. We feed the birds all the time and we topped up with mealworm, fatballs, suet filled coconut shells and suet pellets. We got our identifying sheet ready, got a cuppa and started our watch...



We started at 10:50am and within seconds we saw a jackdaw, followed by a robin. By 10:55am some common pigeons gatecrashed and were then chased off by a pair of magpies. At 11:03am three starlings showed up and one lonely male sparrow.

Throughout the hour we saw one or two jackdaws, starlings, sparrow, robin, common pigeons and magpies back and foe the feeders. Then all of a sudden the starlings went from three to twelve!

Check out some of the photos from our birdwatch...

Our regular robin red breast

Male starling enjoying the suet coconuts

Common pigeon gatecrashing the party

Starlings in the tree

Male sparrow enjoying the fat balls

Check out a video clip of some of the starlings that visited us :)

One for sorrow, two for JOY!

Starling

Jackdaw and pigeon arguing over food

Robin debating whether to eat suet pellets or mealworm

Jackdaw

Magpie stuffing it's face

Magpie in the tree

So we had a very successful hour of birdwatching and here are our results:

30th January 2016 - Swansea, South Wales

• Starlings - 12
• Jackdaws - 3
• Magpies - 3
• Common pigeon - 3
• Sparrow - 1
• Robin - 1
• Total - 23