New blog

I have not had great health for the last few years but still enjoy looking at insects and birds in the garden and checking my wildlife camera for night visits of foxes and hedgehogs
In 2018 we were able to create raised planters full of insect friendly plants and have increased our plantings of winter flowers such as mahonia
We had buff tailed and red tailed bumblebee nests in the ground and witnessed red tailed bees mating
We learned a lot about moths and hoverflies as well but have a long way to go
A highlight was a vapourer moth caterpillar on our roses and a male vapourer mothh seeking a mate
We also kept small and large white butterfly caterpillars in butterfly houses on masturtium
Most were hosts to parasitic wasp larva which hatched and were released to the wild
We have five pupa overwintering in the garage and hope they are viable
We had a small wildlife pond put in a shady corner and soon had frogs toads and newts moved in and got some nice pond dipping microscope videos of micro organisms and daphnia
We had resident reed buntings and goldcrests during the snowy weather and visiting firldfares and redwings - until the berries had been stripped
We had great tits nest and fledge young

So not bad for a small poorly designed garden we inherited eight years ago