All creatures great and small

Tiny froglet

Badger tracks

Leafcutter bee at work

Comma butterfly

Manx Loghtans just after shearing

Looking fleecier... just before leaving The Lodge

photos taken with iPhone 4S

Frolicking frogs

Went ringing again this morning. Didn't catch much, but the garden pond was stuffed full of these fantastic frogs. Love 'em!

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Froglet

The Great Crested Newts seem to have vanished again, so the amphibian content of the pond seems to be down to one Common Frog and one Smooth Newt eft. I love the frog, but I won't be kissing it.

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Frog's back

Common Frog

I think this frog had a narrow escape this morning. I was mowing the lawn not far from the pond (though I'm leaving the grass around the edge) when I suddenly spotted a frog in the shallow water. It's a good job it wasn't a newt...

A female Southern Hawker came to lay eggs in the pond this afternoon, and a Ruddy Darter sat on a piece of wood nearby. I think the male Great Crested Newt may have left, but the female is still around and so is the Smooth Newt eft which was a stowaway in the pond plants that Duncan donated last week.

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Biodiversity

More progress on the pond front. It's still amazingly clear, so it's easy to see what's going on under the water, even right at the bottom.

Pondskaters are still eating, mating, fighting and whizzing around

They've been joined by two Backswimmers, Notonecta glauca. These seem to perform a similar role to a spider on land, catching and eating things caught unawares. As well as swimming around just under the water's surface, they also dive after prey. Apparently they have a nasty bite if you handle them...

Loads of Lesser Water Boatmen have appeared sometime during the past few days. Confusingly, another name for the Backswimmer is Water Boatman, though the two species seem quite different.

The real Water Boatmen have a vegetarian diet and seem to spend a lot of time at the bottom of the pond, only coming to the surface for air, which they carry in the form of a bubble stuck to their rear end. They have 'oars' as well but are quite distinctive.

There are lots of beetles in the pond, some quite big, but not Great Diving Beetle size. I'm going to have to get a pond life book to work out what they all are. We've got a school of three Whirligig Beetles, too.

Two pairs of Common Darters were ovipositing (egg-laying) on Saturday, with other unpaired males bickering for control of the pond. No Broad-bodied Chaser this week

Most exciting (I think) was the discovery of a resident Smooth Newt this afternoon, followed rapidly by our first sighting of a Common Frog. It appeared on the side of one of the plant pots before hopping onto dry land and squeezing under the turf at the edge of the pond. I'll have to be careful when I'm walking around.

We've got amphibians!

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D + EF 300mm f/4L IS USM or Canon Powershot A640

Frogblogging

Common Frog

Today the pond's amphibian head-count was: three frogs, one toad.

photo taken with Nikon Coolpix 995

Wildlife garden update

The pond's first inhabitant! A Common Frog.



As you can see (if you compare with this picture), my garden is coming along nicely. Things are starting to grow up and even the lawn has sprung back into life. Anyone worried about the buddleia that was hacked back savagely in April can breathe a sigh of relief, because that's OK, too.




Foxgloves (two colours)!


Daisy things!


Bluebells!


Don't know what this is...

photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995