Thursday 7 August 2014

Wildlife in my garden

Take a close look at these two little twigs:


It's just that one of them isn't a twig!


That's pretty good camouflage, I reckon.  OK, all you knowledgeable people out there, what is it??

This one is a bit easier to identify:


It's a Dragonfly. I learned recently from my friend David Ford that a Dragonfly rests with its wings spread, whereas a Damselfly rests with its wings folded. Simples!


So this one (photographed in May this year) is a Damselfly:


The Dragonfly I saw this week obligingly spent several minutes sunning itself on a garden chair, giving me plenty of time to go and get my camera, and get shots from many different angles. They don't usually do that.




Other "beasties" seen this week included this, which I think is a Hoverfly of some sort:


And this more common honey bee, seen here burying its head in a Scabious flower:


And this one, enjoying some Oregano:


I have not had as many butterflies in the garden as I would like, but (apart from the inevitable Cabbage Whites) there have been the odd few Commas, Tortoiseshells and (like this one) Peacocks:


Finally - and I know some of you will have seen this before - a Sparrowhawk.


This is a First for me; I've never seen one of these so close-up before. A handsome, but on this occasion angry, bird! It had just failed to take a prey bird, which escaped by hiding in my big Bay tree. After sitting for a few minutes looking peeved, the Sparrowhawk flew away, and its prey survived.


7 comments:

  1. It is a stick caterpillar. Or at least that is what I've heard them called. Such an unimaginative name, isn't it? Though I think there are different stick caterpillars so what they turn into later on, I haven't a clue. Probably quite a few different moths. I love those hawk photos. I used to see hawks all the time at my last house (and sometime leftover feather in the garden from a kill), but I haven't seen any around this house.

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  2. Lovely photographs. Yes, the 'twig' is a caterpillar of some moth, maybe peppered moth?. You right, they camouflage as twigs. Cute.
    I enjoyed this post very much.

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  3. Such great camouflage, I wouldn't have looked twice at that thinking it was a twig. We have lots of sparrowhawks around here, they're beautiful birds, but real killing machines. Your garden bird was lucky to escape.

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  4. Daphne is correct, it's a stick caterpillar that will turn into bark-camoflaged geometrid-family moth

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  5. The variety of wildlife in the garden is amazing if you take notice of it. There's a pair of Golden Eagles that I see all the time, I think they nest nearby. I'm always happy to see them, but I know the rats and rabbits are shivering in their burrows...

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  6. Definitely a moth caterpillar but one or two are similar - what type of plant was it feeding on>

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  7. I was just wondering that same thing about the dragonflies when we went on a nature walk just the other day - why some kept their wings out and others didn't. Learn something new everyday.

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