Wild Words from the Ground - August

Welcome to our blogs featuring the photos and sightings of wildlife in the garden (and outreach sites like Chattowood and the Meanwhile Garden) by our staff, whether in the office, shop, tea-room, nursery or garden. The images are curated and commented upon by Dr Chris Gibson, our Wildlife Advocate. The previous Wild Words blog was posted at the end of the third week of July, so this one covers the rest of that month, plus the whole of August.

While the photos are not always of the highest quality – our staff are busy doing their main jobs! – they give a real feel of life in the garden, something we are very keen to encourage, as indeed was Beth.

July had already been a remarkable month for wildlife in the garden, especially with the  ‘Ladybird Blizzard’ (see here for a link to the last blog), and during the final week that continued apace, so much so that there is as almost much to report from that week as from the whole of August!

After the best period I have ever known for butterflies in the garden, numbers dropped away a little as August approached and especially as drought reasserted itself after a damp intermission. But Miya managed to get a photo of a lovely male Common Blue, while Cathy captured (not literally!) a pristine Painted Lady, so perfect it was probably the locally bred offspring of an earlier season immigrant from southern Europe.

Jersey Tiger moths are as bright as any butterfly, and fly by day as well as by night. And they are increasingly a part of our summer scene, having spread north over the past couple of decades, presumably linked to climate change. We have seen several in the gardens this summer, more than ever before, but the one that Scott photographed on Beth’s house looks interesting, probably the scarcer form with yellow rather than orange-red hindwings.

A perennial favourite in these reports, by virtue of its size and eyespots, is the caterpillar of the Elephant Hawk Moth, this one found by Ben. It would be a substantial meal for a bird, so it has defences: it can inflate the body segments with the eye-spots, rear up and wave from side to tide in a convincingly snake-like way. This one looks pretty much fully grown and was probably looking for a patch of loose soil in which to bury itself for pupation.

We talk a lot about moths in these blogs, but rather less about their main predators, bats, largely because nobody is around the garden at night to see them. So it was a surprise for Rob and Matt to turn up for work one morning to find a couple of bats sleeping under the apex of one of the large tearoom umbrellas. Plans were hatched to cordon off the area from public use before opening time, to avoid disturbing the bats (and customers getting droppings in their coffee!), but as the day warmed up the bats were up and away to who knows where. We would really like to explore the use of our garden by bats in more detail.

Bumblebees have been thankfully abundant throughout much of this summer. Gill took a lovely photo of one in a centaurea flowerhead; the rich orange of hairs on its thorax helps to identify this as a Common Carder-bee. Less obvious perhaps, but sometimes numerous, Rob found dozens of Brassica Shield-bugs crawling on the Erysimum mutabile, the leaves pitted with holes from the piercing mouthparts of the bugs.

On the stock beds, Sean was very excited to find a Wasp Spider. Like Jersey Tiger, this is a species that has spread northwards from the far south of the country in recent decades, but unlike the moth, Wasp Spiders cannot fly. Their spiderlings balloon on strands of silk, but that is only floating, and entirely at the whim of wind direction.

Then we have the stars of the last few days of July, two spectacular new species for the garden list. Cathy and Scott came upon a Southern Oak Bush-cricket, a female as her abdomen terminates in a long, curved ovipositor. First recorded in Britain in 2001, this species reached the Colchester area maybe a decade ago. Unlike the similar Oak Bush-cricket, it is wingless and therefore flightless; it’s colonization and spread from the Continent is thought to be by means of hitching lifts on motor vehicles.

And best of all in my opinion, Steve photographed an ‘unusual-looking fly’ nectaring on Lysimachia clethroides. This is a dramatically marked species called Phasia hemiptera, or the Bat-winged Phasia from the unusual angle it holds its wings, an insect I know only from the flower rich, insect covered mountain valleys of the Spanish Pyrenees. It has in fact been found well scattered across Britain (I must just have been unlucky!) but it would be an interesting addition to our resident fauna. Except perhaps for our shield-bugs: Phasia lays its eggs on the bugs, often on the head, and the larvae eat and kill the adult bugs from the inside.

Not to be left out of the action, David in the Beth Chatto Meanwhile Garden found caterpillars munching the self-sown prickly lettuce flowerheads, hiding away in plain sight with their effective camouflage. These belong to a moth called Small Ranunculus, with attractive ‘lichen-spangled’ wings, that recolonized this country about 30 years ago after becoming extinct 50 or so years previously. It is still found mainly in the south-eastern sector of England, and it is especially associated with brownfield sites and gardens in which its wild and cultivated lettuce foodplants thrive.

Into August, and staying with David’s observations of the Meanwhile wildlife, we have here Small Copper on buddleja in a thrilling colour clash, together with Common Field Grasshopper, Hairy Shield-bug, an unidentified (and unidentifiable!) parasitic wasp and the distinctive spider-hunting wasp Dipogon subintermedius. The latter seems to be really rather scarce in north-east Essex, although it may well be under-recorded and under-reported.

Back in the main gardens, Scott was lucky enough to see and film this Hummingbird Hawkmoth, a migratory species from further south that has been in sadly short supply this summer. So far! I am ever the optimist…. And Steve had an entertaining time wrangling a Large Yellow Underwing before it flew off and showed off the reason for its name, a flash coloration designed to startle predators and give it a chance to escape, while Cathy found one of the same species crawling on the gravel drive.

As is typical at this time of year, moth caterpillars have been quite a feature. We touched upon one, the Elephant Hawkmoth at the end of July, and Sybille found another in the Water Garden where it could have been feeding on bogbean, a favoured foodplant alongside fuchsia and willowherbs. Another hawk, Lime Hawkmoth was found by a visitor and photographed by Cathy; as well as tilia, this caterpillar also feeds on leaves of oaks, alders, elms and other broad-leaved trees, and it is readily distinguished by its greyish appearance and blue ‘tail-horn’.

Next, a trio of hairy caterpillars: many hairy caterpillars release irritant chemicals if the hairs are damaged, so the presence of hairs is assumed to reduce the risks of predation, especially by birds. In order, there is a Knotgrass (Rob) which as its name suggests usually feeds on rumex and persicaria species, a Buff-tip (Cathy) the adult of which is beautifully camouflaged as a snapped silver birch twig, and a White Ermine (Rob).

Then there are the ‘hairiest of the hairy’, members of the tussock-moth family, which I think of as ‘psychedelic toothbrushes’. The most outrageously coloured of all is Angela’s Vapourer Moth, but the Pale Tussock is usually a close second. However, Rob’s find shows rather muted shades compared with the normal vivid yellows and greens: this could be because it is about to pupate, or perhaps it may have been parasitized by a parasitic wasp and thus on its last legs.

Another large group of moth caterpillars are hairless, relying for their defensive camouflage on being able to stop stock-still on their food plant and transform themselves into a twig. But Rob’s example was intent on going places, demonstrating its characteristic locomotion style: these are the ‘inchworms’ or ‘earth-measurers’ or ‘loopers’ from the way they walk. All much of a muchness to look at, but the position of the front half bulges and the tiny rear black tufts tells us this is Pale Oak Beauty. And this photo shows clearly that, like all insects, caterpillars have just three pairs of true legs – the fleshy appendages at the back end are known as pro-legs.

Angela was surprised by the appearance of this large, distinctive creature, a Western Conifer Seed Bug. Easily recognised by its size and the ‘flags’ on its hind legs, late summer is a good time of year to find them as they head into hibernation. But it was not always thus: this North American insect has become established (accidentally) in Britain only since 2007.

And over at Chattowood, Cathy remarked on the size of the insect nests being formed in parts of the bare sand which support this unique garden. They are probably the work of a large solitary wasp, and I spotted both Bee Wolf and Sand Wasp there on the same day: either of those could be responsible. And then a week or so later David found a Sand Wasp exploring the Meanwhile Garden for caterpillars on which to feed its offspring: clearly they are more adept at dispersing around the landscape that we might imagine.

Following Sean’s first one of the summer in late July, August has seen a remarkable number of Wasp Spiders around the garden, stock beds and nursery. Sightings have been less than annual in recent years, so the four or more seen this month represent a welcome increase of this splendid creature, with Emily, Rob, Cathy and Steve all getting in on the finding and photographing. Scott posed a question about the purpose of the ‘zig-zag’ web: a very simple question but one without a simple answer. The zig-zag section of the web is called the stabilimentum and it is a feature of the webs of the wasp spider genus Argiope. Some say it is involved in making the web more obvious to birds so they don't fly through it. Others suggest it is to do with shading in exposed locations. But my preferred answer is strengthening: the main prey of wasp spiders is grasshoppers, which of course have a very powerful kick and could do a lot of damage to a web if it were not strengthened. Then right at the end of the month, Hollie put the arachnophobes of this world to shame.

And a final few words bring us neatly, and unusually, to vertebrates. With visits to the garden mostly in daylight and when there are other staff and visitors around, it is always good to find anything with a backbone, other than birds! The more terrestrial amphibians are the most likely to be found with a bit of searching among the flowerbeds or even the nursery, like this Common Frog (Scott) and Common Toad (Angela), the hunters doing what we hope they will, exerting some control over things like slugs that we really don’t want to see too many of.

Reptiles are much less frequently seen, although this summer has witnessed a slight upturn in the reported sightings of Grass Snakes in and around the ponds. The latest (sadly too quick for a photo) was a baby at the foot of the steps up to Beth’s house, spotted by Scott and others in the garden team, indicating that they must be breeding successfully with us.

Mallards breed with us every year, and Scott perhaps discovered one of the keys to their success when he watched three well grown ducklings feeding avidly on the berries of arum. These berries are known to contain all sorts of toxins, to us at least: the metabolism of birds is clearly very different to ours. Though what it would mean for us if we were to make duck liver pâté (DON’T WORRY – we won’t be!) from them, who knows!!

The roosting bats last seen at the end of July reappeared on at least one morning in August, meaning that checking the umbrellas has now become a regular task before visitors descend. On one occasion Rob managed to take a short video, with a still from that shown here: the lack of prominent ears suggest that these are likely to be one of the pipistrelle species.

And in really exciting news, thanks to the connections made by Rob and Pete with the Wildlives Animal Rescue Centre, we are now home to several rescued and released hedgehogs (photos by Jo and Pete). While we have very occasionally seen hedgehogs or their droppings, these have probably come from a transient population, so to seek to establish a resident population of slug-munchers well away from the threats of busy roads and pesticides has long been an ambition of ours.

For a different perspective on the last month, see my personal blog from the end of August:

The Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens: all set for an early Autumn | Chris Gibson Wildlife

As the foregoing shows, the Beth Chatto Gardens this summer have really lived up to their reputation as an ‘incidental nature reserve’. And even though we are now tumbling headlong towards autumn, there is still plenty to see in the wild side of the garden.  Who knows, we may get another insect upsurge as the offspring of the July ‘Ladybird Blizzard’ emerge? And whatever else happens we will see bird populations change as summer visitors like warblers and Swallows move away to be replaced by the thrushes and suchlike from more northerly climes. The joys of the garden are never-ending!