My Wild-life Garden Chapter 18: October 12th

Every year I am surprised and delighted by the new seasons. There is so much variety. Even the earlier darkness makes it easier to go out at night with a torch. There is always something to see. Last week I crossed the path of a fat yellow frog, with black markings.

Autumn leaves hardly need a mention, but that does not make them any less splendid to enjoy. Every day they are a little different. At the moment green predominates, but all softened with red and brown and yellow. They are starting to fall too, which does make a problem for the wild pond. At the moment it is too surrounded with growth to be netable, but I do not want it filled with rotting leaves. As usual there will be some sort of compromise, involving too little too late.

First leaf-fall; hawthorn

This afternoon the sun shone. Once again there was plethora of flies, hovering and darting amongst the seed -heads in search of the last nectar. Some flowers that I mentioned way back in the summer are still producing blooms – Leucanthemum vulgare, the Ox-eye daisy, for example; also Fuschia magellicana, Fuschia. One plant of Campanula rotundifolia, Harebell, is still flowering despite being self-seeded in a most inhospitable-looking masonry crack. This is all good news for insects. So is Hedera helix, Ivy. You may not think of ivy as a flower, but mature growths do have flowers in autumn of the palest green; and very welcome they are for all those autumn insects.

Ivy flowers

There are lots of berries around too. In addition to the hips and haws already mentioned there is a fine crop on Sambucus nigra, Elder. This is self-seeded behind the hedge and is about due to be cut back; but I will leave it till birds have had their fill. Small birds are still fairly rare visitors to the feeders, I hope because there is such abundance of seeds and berries and insects to be had wild. A robin has appeared, which is nice. I believe they go in for short-distance migration, so this one may have spent the summer miles away. I saw the sparrow-hawk again, and there were about fifty geese, high up and cackling.

In the sun there are trails of gossamer glinting all over the place, and all sorts of spider's webs. I was especially pleased to see, in a crack in the wall, a hunting spider of some sort. It might be Misumena vatia, one of the crab spiders. They do not catch prey in nests but pounce on passers by.

Crab spider

I am pleased to give another book a plug once again. This time it is “The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy” by Michael McCarthy.

It is certainly a book to make you think. Here are so many sad tales of destruction and extinction. But if the magic of rivers, or wonder in the wings of a butterfly, or the buzz of bees, or the colours of autumn fills you with joy, you are in good company.